Walking on a Broken Past
by With A Midnight Smile
Summary: Harry Potter never had an easy life. When he is struck by an unknown spell in what he hopes is the Final battle, he awakens to find himself about to be adopted... as Severus Tobias Snape. Mostly canon, AU Timetravel. Still the same old Snape. Abandoned
1. Remind Me Why I Live

Walking on a Broken Past

**Words: 8,756**

**Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, Severus Snape, or any of JKR's creations in general. I do not own the theory of time travel, the multiverse, or the "oh noes, the second war lasts forever!" plot device for that matter. What I do own (I think...) is the precise twist this story has, as I have never seen anything of the sort before. I do not own nuclear winter, weapons, or the cold war. **

**Warnings: Character death. Gory descriptions. Child abuse. Spouse abuse. Suicide. Murder. Not completely canon, even discounting the AU it starts in. Mostly canon through books six and parts of seven (main exceptions being the very end and epilogue). Weasley bashing. Dumbledore bashing. Potter bashing. Order bashing. Hogwarts Professor bashing. Glorifying of evil and Voldemort. Nerdy moments. Fake spells created on a Latin translator are also included. Occasional religious comments (but I'm an atheist, so they're kinda widespread and not from the religious perspective). Lots of angst. Coarse language. Drug abuse. Alcohol abuse. Slash pairings. Oedipal undertones. Sexual innuendo. Mentions of sex (but the actual act thereof will not be described in this story).**

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_Chapter 1: Remind Me Why I Live_

"_We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and a presumption that once our eyes watered." Tom Stoppard_

Eyes darting left to right, right to left, he kept his adrenaline high, waiting. Where was that bastard?

It was dark, three minutes to midnight before July the thirty-first, and just a moment ago, he'd been fighting the man who turned his life into living hell. His green eyes continued scanning the battle field, over smoking craters and torn turf. Somehow, he'd never imagined the fight would be like this, just him and the Dark Lord. It was always that Voldemort would storm the castle, literally, with all his Death Eaters in tow, and the Chosen One would come out, wand blazing, with the Order of the Phoenix and Dumbledore's Army in his wake.

That, however, wasn't what had happened at all. He imagined a stormy battle, with lightning bursts in the distance and rain spattering his face, friends and foe alike falling, but that he would come out on top...

Oh how wrong he was! Now it was just the two of them who were left to the war at all. Harry Potter was a single man, all his friends and family long since dead, fighting Tom Riddle, better known as the Dark Lord Voldemort, who was very recently left bereft of followers. This marked the pair as the last wizards in all of Britain, excepting perhaps a few young muggleborns who might have escaped the Great Muggle Purge of June sixth of the year two-thousand and six, if any of them hadn't been killed at times after that either.

Neither may live while the other survives... it was a damning line in an equally damning prophecy. So long as they both were alive, physically speaking, neither could so much as _think_ of doing anything more than kill the other. They couldn't physically leave the Isles either, so long as the other wished it. When Harry had found this out, he had tried to make the British wizarding world flee, told them that if they left, Voldemort couldn't kill anyone else, and Harry could at the very least contain the threat. The problem was that wizards are a proud lot, and the old British Society wizards were the most stubborn of them all. No one would leave, because they didn't want to admit defeat. Three months later, Voldemort had killed every muggle in the country except for the very few he meant to keep as slaves and set up wards to lock out any foreign aid, taking wizarding Britain off the map, both radar and visibly.

From there, it was all the Americans and Russians' job. With the sudden obliteration of a country right between the two, each assumed the other was the culprit. Warheads flew, and it was nuclear winter. England was untouched by this except to know that something was wrong with the world. Too few were alive to care about anything but survival.

A whisper of incorporeal energy whizzed by his ear, and the Chosen Savior of the Wizarding World turned on his heel. There was the one who had caused it all; a tall man, almost seven feet (daunting to Harry's own short stature), skin a shining alabaster under the full moon, and eyes literally glowing a stunning red to combat the deathly green on the Dark Lord's foe. Having long since gotten over irony of the Slytherin with Gryffindor eyes against a Gryffindor's of Slytherin green, Harry did not dawdle. He merely incanted.

_Tectum spiritus!_ He thought furiously, slashing his wand forward in a jagged pattern. The blazing green light of the Killing curse was caught, as usual, by his "Shield of Life" that had been invented by one Ronald Weasley based on the blood protection that had been instilled in Harry from birth. Every time someone died on his behalf, he could use the shield ten times. Needless to say, he didn't need to keep track anymore. _Reducto! Sectumsempra! Avada Kadavera! Avada Kadavera!_ With each spell, he couldn't help but to become more enraged, more desperate. He had to end this, and end it _now_! The least he could do in honor of the thirty-seventh birthday that was fast approaching would be to kill the murderer, wouldn't it? It was too long, too _bloody_ long! He'd spent years doing this until every Death Eater was gone, every Order member or DA student avenged... except those killed by Voldemort personally.

He remembered that, just before his fifth year, Alastor Moody had shown him a picture of the Old Order. The first casualty he knew of by name from Voldemort's own wand had been a rather portly witch by the name of Dorcas Meadows, then he knew of his parents, Bertha Jorkins, the old man from Little Hangleton... the list went on to include most of his friends who survived the first year of Horcrux hunting. Any who didn't had been killed in the new Hogwarts regime, when he told them to _stay in school, be safe_. They were dead because Harry Potter was a Grade A idiot.

A spell of violent fuchsia was speeding toward him, and Harry held his wand and waved it in the lightning pattern of the rune "Eiwahz" and shouting his spell in his mind once more. _Tectum Spiritus!_ It could stop any spell Voldemort had ever tried on it in the past. The fuchsia clashed with his pale pink shield rimmed in green, and Harry paled. Voldemort had gotten him. The roiling light broke the Shield of Life and struck his infamous lightning bolt scar; the Mark of Eiwahz that prophecy had dictated must be untouched.

Everything went black.

X.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.X

The sound of two voices reached Harry's ears just as he woke up. What had happened to Voldemort? Had he perhaps rigged up a fortress of sorts and tossed him in with the muggle slaves while he was unconscious? No, the old snake was just as cruel as Harry himself. Somehow, he'd managed to get himself away after that mystery spell hit him, it was the only explanation. But, then, what fool in the Isles didn't know well enough to stay away from Harry Potter? He was a veritable Voldemort magnet after all; who would want to bring his wrath down upon them that badly? There were plenty of easier, less painful ways to commit suicide, he was sure.

He moved to get up, but found that his arms had very limited mobility, never mind that everything about himself seemed... smaller. The voices were rather muffled, as if the speakers had a low-powered ward up to prevent the conversation being heard, though he could still place the voices. One man and one woman. There weren't many couples in Britain any more, they only people remaining were those who were too weak to make the journey or with small children too young to swim the distance between Wales and France. By now, all young adults had migrated for easier places to survive (France being the ideal since no one could accuse them of instigating any nuclear war, being France, though being near to Germany only the Western and Southern parts of the country were entirely safe) and the old deceased. Most orphaned children were dead as well, so who was mad enough to remain?

"Tobias, just look at him!" the woman's voice had come into focus then. "He's completely helpless, and you know as well as I that the chances of him being magic are very low. My father said no family's have been reported missing or dead in a while since the War. Muggleborns are an anomaly among themselves; one is born per every ten generations in a family _tops_. He's normal, I'm sure." Who hadn't heard of him? Harry Potter, the Man of a Thousand Broken Mirrors? The Black Cat Crusader? (He had a feeling that one had to do with Batman in some way.) He had even been called "the salt spiller" once. What few people remained were guaranteed to have heard of Britain's bad luck charm, weren't they? It made no sense to his ears.

"And what do you think that stupid ritual of yours would do to it? That's magic to, isn't it?" The man had a bitter voice, low and cruel. Harry categorized it under the level of snappishness that he usually listed only the worst cases in, having labeled that file as "Snape-ish" a long time ago. Needless to say, he was in that category as well. But what muggles could do a magic ritual, anyway?

"I already told you, it's just an adoption ritual," the woman had a less than happy overall tone to her voice, and sounded a bit mannish. Already Harry was reminded of Millicent Bulstrode. By now he realized they couldn't be talking about him, anyway; adoption rituals only worked on children below the age of seven. He liked to classify being freshly thirty-seven as "well above seven". "It doesn't transfer the magic of either party involved, just some genetic structure. You may be impotent, but I _do_ want a child, and I don't see why we can't just pick up a boy who's been abandoned so obviously on our doorstep. The spell placed him at a year old today, the perfect time to take him in." How odd. Why was there a one-year-old child in Britain? Who was fool enough to reproduce with Voldemort waiting around the bend to _kill_ everyone?

"And how do we explain him away, Eileen? The neighbors –" But the man was cut off.

"We're moving tomorrow anyway," she snapped roughly. "He won't be noticed. If I tell my parents we've had a child, they will no doubt set aside a fund for us take care of him with until he starts school so I don't have to worry about finding a job in Nottingham just yet. Please, Tobias?"

An annoyed huff escaped the man before he acquiesced. "Alright, but I'll pick his name. He's going to be... Severus. Severus Tobias Snape." Harry opened his eyes in horror. What sort of fool would name their child after the infamous traitor? Didn't they realize that Voldemort still had the taboo up? Blurred vision caught two figures and he opened his mouth to warn them.

All that came out was an infant's unhappy cry. It was that ambiguous noise that a small child makes that no one but a mother can discern between. Is the baby hungry? Is the baby tired? Did he wet himself? Is he frightened? No one but the baby knows. Harry was the baby.

"Oh, look what you've done," The woman was _cooing_ now, cooing over _Harry Potter_. He was being lifted up... how could he be lifted up? He was thirty-seven years old, not one! One year old children weren't cognizant! One year old children didn't fight Dark Lords or exert their will to keep that same Dark Lord out of what remained of the free world! "You've made him cry. Why would you pick a name like that? Severus means to sever – hardly a name for a child, Tobias."

"It's a name for a _man_, Eileen," The man had the Snape sneer to his voice. Then Harry understood; he was going to be Severus Snape, the grumpy git of the dungeons and overgrown bat. "It's a name to remind him that his mother is unnatural, and to show what'll happen if he doesn't grow up to be a _normal_ man. It ought to remind you, too. We'll do that ritual of yours, and I hope my normal blood can counteract that magic nonsense in yours. The world doesn't need another freak."

Harry had stopped crying, horrified, but at the same time filled with his first hope in almost twenty years. He was Severus Snape. That meant it was January in 1961, and he could know his real parents. He could change the world now; he could save Sirius, Dumbledore, and even Cedric. Voldemort wouldn't get to terrorize the world, because he would save the world. It was perfect, even if he did have to live in the home of Snape's parents. With the soft heartbeat of Eileen Prince-Snape as his lullaby, Harry fell asleep, dreaming of a brighter tomorrow.

X.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.X

It was three years later, and Harry, now Severus (just Russy as his new mother had come to call him), was weeding the garden in some ill-fitting jeans and a too-snug t-shirt, but they kept him warm in the nippy January air. Black hair that had lost its life and more natural sheen fell into his eyes, clumpy, greasy, and badly cut. The water in the new hovel had been turned off two weeks ago, and there was no more "baby fund" for Eileen to dip into to make sure that they had running water. Dark brown eyes, so dark they appeared near black, were glaring at a weed that his four-year-old body couldn't pull. Tobias was at work, Eileen trying to find a job, and Severus was left home alone everyday to pull weeds.

He couldn't remember a time when he'd had a roof and been treated worse. True, Eileen adored him, tried to protect him from Tobias, and he had a proper room to himself, but the head of the Snape family was a drunken brute. If he had been about six times heavier, most of that being fat and a beer belly, and had a thick mustache, Severus might have almost called him Uncle Vernon, but he didn't. Vernon didn't beat the woman he'd sworn to love forever. These were people giving him the name of a boy who would grow up to be instrumental in the war, weren't they? He should respect them... but he couldn't bring himself to dredge up any emotion more light-hearted than contempt for Tobias.

With one final tug, Severus managed to free the last offending weed from the deplorable tyranny of the flowerbed nation and tossed it into the small pile he had made to put in the compost heap later. As it was the last one in the family's small front yard (which was about large enough for the vegetable garden and a bit extra in the form of a walkway), he pulled off the overlarge gardening gloves from his small, long-fingered hands and wiped sweat from his small brow. He had done worse for the Dursleys: mowing the lawn (this one had no grass to begin with), washing the car (a rundown little thing from the forties), cooking (he only had to make himself lunch, so far), and pretending not to exist (he wished) were but a few of such duties. Here, Severus just had to make sure that the vegetables weren't being killed and tidy in the main room of the house, the family room/dining room/kitchen. Even at four, it would have been a break for Harry Potter. The violence and turmoil of the house more than made up for the lack of duties, however.

He put the gloves back on his tiny hands, with the rubber-padded fingers flopped over, empty, so that he could pick up his baby-compost heap. He walked around back to the bare dirt patch that was the Snape backyard, and tossed the remains of plant-life into the compost heap. He didn't know why they bothered doing something for their future, like growing vegetables they couldn't water (or they couldn't if Eileen weren't filling the water tank every morning with magic, though barely as her magic weakened from lack of use) considering they would probably move again soon anyway. He'd lived in ten houses in three years. Not the best track records for the parents.

Opening the back door of the house, he took off his shoes (really an old pair several sizes too large from a second hand shop) and smacked them as hard as he could against the cement stoop to dislodge dirt before putting them back on. Severus always got in trouble if he tracked dirt in the house, even as a cute little four-year-old (_going on forty_, he reminded himself) child, but he couldn't walk around the house barefoot either. Tobias liked to throw his beer bottles at the wall when he was done, and sometimes Eileen couldn't pick all of the shards up. More often, she didn't have the time between Tobias giving her time alone in the rumpus room and him returning to get her wand from where she hid it under a loose floorboard and vanish the shards. It tended to travel about with her shoes as well, so Severus was careful to keep his on.

He crept out of the laundry room, which was where the back door led, and into the hall. Walking swiftly down the hall (for his diminutive form) he opened the door to his room and closed it... most of the way, at least. It had swollen due to a misfire from Eileen's wand, so it couldn't shut completely. Severus' was a small room, big enough for a toddler bed and dresser with play space near the door.

Three toys sat neatly in the corner about two feet from a rusty baseboard heater. A ring-stacker that, instead of arranging in size and rainbow order, he had used to calculate the intents of spell by color. Blue spells were (generally) light, yellow light-neutral, orange and green were neutral, red dark-neutral, and purples dark. Sadly, the rings didn't have white (Dark spells), black (Neutral), or silver (Light), but it hardly factored in. Ever since the set had been purchased, he had tried to use them to find the intent of the fuchsia spell, but to no avail.

Beside the ring-stacker was a plushy lion, worn when he had received it and hardly touched after that. Harry had learned just how treacherous lions could be, and Severus would be a serpent when he was old enough to be Sorted. The fact that the thing looked like it had been mauled by one of its own hadn't helped.

The third and last was Severus' favorite; a child's potion set that he kept hidden from Tobias at all costs, because who knew what the mad muggle would do to it? Harry Potter had been better-than-average at Potions when he knew what he was doing. Severus Snape, however, was to be considered a genius, inventing several important potions, and the new Severus would live up to that reputation. (These included the Draught of Peace, the latest version of skele-gro which, sadly, tasted _better_ than the ones around in his current time, and an obscure potion that cleared the body of impurities before rituals.) That one small potion kit that he used to mix things like dandelion juices and chopped tomato leaves (which, oddly, actually _did_ something if he could find something to set on fire) was his key to the future. The knowledge of Dark Arts was already taken care of.

Severus turned his attention from the toys, shaking the cobwebs free of his head. He was four now, and Tobias was likely not to let him play with the toys anymore, because "only girls play; men work". Newsflash for Mr. Snape; Severus was still very much a child, in appearance anyways. Were he properly clothed and cleaned, people would still be pinching his cheeks on the street, which was something classified only for children and people with very odd grandmothers.

He sat down on the small toddler bed, touching the rough cotton sheets with small, callused fingers. Crossing his legs in the "criss cross applesauce" manner he had learned in Kindergarten, and would again when he started school in two years, he started focusing inward, on his mind and being. Children weren't supposed to experience their first major magical growth spurt until they turned seven years old, the next at eleven, then thirteen, when they came of age at seventeen, and they would reach their peak at forty-nine (being seven seven times). But Harry had been very different; why should Severus be anything less?

The magical mind is a strange thing. A wizard's mind is not organized in a way someone could really imagine. A muggle, when think of clearing their mind, might imagine a library, and having all the books on shelves or perhaps a house with various rooms. Severus knew of many ways that muggles thought because he had once thought himself a muggle, and he knew that no muggle could truly grasp the intricacies of the mind. When Severus closed his eyes, he saw a lot of darkness, but there was always that red light shining through. Then, when he ignored the red light, he could see a lot of other colors; green worms of color, blue spots, small, white specks falling like snow, but infinitely slower. Even when he cleared his vision of these lights, there were always more.

That was what he had based his occlumancy walls on: light. While the art was praised as being hard to master at best, and a mark of a true master of one's magic, Severus was only four and had impenetrable occlumancy skills. His philosophy was that there was always some small amount of light if one knew where to look. True, he had no clue where to look, and he'd rarely caught so much as a glimpse, but he still knew it to be true. If there was no light, then there was no darkness, and therefore nothing existed to begin with. So anyone penetrating his mind would see light, and if they took away that light there would still be more, because as pessimistic and disillusioned as he was, Severus was an optimist in a round-about fashion. It's what had gotten him into Gryffindor as Harry Potter. He'd always hoped he could save the world from Voldemort after all, and by keeping him in Britain, he had, even if the trigger-happy Russians and Americans and screwed it up.

Every day, since Eileen and Tobias had decided he was old enough to take care of himself (he was four! What was wrong with these people?) Severus had sat in his room after all of his chores were done and worked on occlumancy until he had sorted through everything to put them into layers of light. This in and of its self had been a strain on his magical core, as he was only just at the age where some children started having accidental magic, but after occlumancy he would move onto more strenuous tasks. The beginnings of wandless magical training. It was difficult, and it made him want to pass out sometimes, but he was learning. He wouldn't be helpless to protect his new mother from the barbarian she had married as he had been himself against his Uncle. Severus Snape grew to be a bitter man, but since Harry had been before the change, it would be no problem to grow adjusted to the role even as he grew up.

It never occurred to him to wonder why he couldn't imagine changing who Severus Snape would be.

"Severus!" Eileen's voice rang through the house, a bit higher than it had been a few years ago, a bit more old and crackly despite the fact that she was only just thirty years old. The boy in question stood from his toddler bed and exited the room, making sure to lower the lion as he did. It wouldn't do for anyone to see the lion floating in his room. "Oh, Severus, I have good news for you. I got a job as a maid for a nice family on the other side of town. We'll have the water back on before Tobias knows what's happened at all." She reached down and scooped the small boy up, kissing him on the cheek. "Let's get you cleaned up, dear; I think I can actually make the water hot this time."

Unfortunately for them both, they didn't hear the car pulling into the driveway or the door opening up front, because Eileen was too concerned with "her little man having some fun" in the tub. They didn't hear as Tobias entered the house, heavy work boots clunking on the floor. Neither heard him as he stalked into the kitchen, boots echoing on the fake tiling, to pick up a wash rag and wipe away the dirt that had accumulated over the day from his brow. What they did hear, however, was a very angry Tobias Snape blowing up when he turned the faucet to find that the water was not running.

Eileen had immediately stopped washing Severus' hair (she seemed to think him incapable) and rushed over the plastic flooring, the same fake tiles as in the kitchen, to answer her husband, despite knowing what it meant for her physical health. Severus rinsed his hair quickly and was half dry before his mother had even gotten into the main room of the house. There was shouting – there had always_ been_ shouting – while Severus pulled on the clean jeans and sweater that had been laid out for him. He slipped his shoes back over bare feet, knowing better than to try to find socks. This was his chance, he was sure of it. He'd rather not do it while naked though.

Judging my the shouts, nothing really bad was happening yet. The words "freak," "heathen," and "witch" were being thrown around a lot. Harry would have run in there, wand blazing, and fought off the mad man who dared try to make himself Severus' role model. The problem was that Severus, unlike Harry, did not have a wand or any sort of control over his magic beyond inciting certain types of emotion-based wandless magic.

"You promised that you would stop all that magic shit years ago!" Tobias raged, stalking closer to his wife as she backed away. "I should have known, you heathen!" It seemed that whenever Tobias was home only shouts and religious doctrine had filled the air. Severus almost preferred the Dursleys to him, because at least they used their one ideals rather than that of the church – a family of rather lax Anglicans was a normal occurrence, because the very devout families were viewed as mad and the not-at-all devout were not well liked in Little Whinging – and they had the decency not to shout when others could hear. Tobias Snape was on the verge of revealing magic to the muggles, or else making the neighbors believe that Eileen was a practitioner of Wicca or some sort of Pagan religion. "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live! Give me one good reason you demon, you harpy, and I'll –"

This was his moment. With Eileen standing backed up to the false-wood paneled walls and Tobias slowly closing in, this was Severus' chance. He left his cover from the hallway and darted into the room, overlarge shoes slapping at his feet with every step. His small body stood between the imposing form of his false father and the meek one of his new mother. How dare he do this! Severus was ready to fight, no matter what it took, even magic. He didn't ever come up to Tobias' impressive beer belly, but there was no backing down. Hitting a man was one thing, doing the same to a woman was another. Even if Severus had the body of a child, he was a man at heart and wouldn't stand to watch a woman be abused.

"Out of my way brat!" A meaty fist lashed out and cuffed Severus lightly, knocking him over. It was light for the man who was doing the hitting, but to a four year old child it felt like he'd been bowled over by a semi truck. With Severus' body screaming "danger!" to his brain, even as he consciously ignored it, his magic didn't.

The unearthly force that had been ineptly named with something so small and unimpressive sounding as "magic" lashed out in retaliation towards the being who dared damage its wielder. It was a power to be reckoned with, and Severus desperately wished to control it, to reign it in. But he knew that wasn't about to happen, either. No, instead the strange waver in the air, like steam rising off of hot tar, reached forward and knocked back the muscled man that was known as Tobias Snape. It was no love tap.

Tobias Snape was not a small man, nor did he much resemble what Severus remembered he would look like when he was older. No, this pathetic excuse for a man was over six feet tall, taller than the impressive figure of Professor Snape, his hair was dark brown and cut in a military issue buzz cut. Sharp blue-gray eyes had a certain focus to them, even when drunk, and his jaw was strong, covered in gritty stubble. Being a construction worker had given him strong limbs; he was fast, no slouch in a real fight, and had lost any chance at having fashion sense as he wore a lumber-jack style flannel shirt, sans sleeves, and plain jeans. And this was the strong muggle man that Severus' magic, frightened that its charge should be harmed, struck down with ease.

With Tobias out of the picture (though Severus was highly tempted to simply refer to him as "Snape"), the man in children's clothing (which sounded much more awkward than it was) shoved himself off the ground, nursing a bruised jaw. Eileen was still staring at the man on the ground, knocked out by her adopted son's magic, hardly noticing as the boy led her to the ratty old couch. What had just happened? She had been so sure that the abandoned child she'd found in a London park would be a muggle, a little boy that would fulfill her wishes of having a son (it wasn't her fault she'd married an impotent muggle!) and her husband's to have that child be "normal."

Severus, however, was not the least bit troubled by all of this. He sat his mother down on the couch and made tea, wishing he didn't have to move around his little step-stool to do so. Exhaustion was threatening to take over as he had already done too much magic for his developing body before Eileen came home, let alone the little lashing he gave Tobias. But he had a job to do; his nap could wait.

"Oh, Russy," Eileen moaned when the clunky mug bearing a harried-looking cartoon penguin holding a coffee mug and yelling "stress?! What stress?!" was stuffed into her hands. Her hands were trembling as she held the mug, clutching it like a life-line. "My little boy... you're so young. You shouldn't be... you can't..." She burst into tears, and all Severus could do was pull himself onto the couch beside her and cuddle up like the small child he was supposed to be. "My baby is a wizard..." she whispered finally, tucking an arm around the child.

Little did he know as he drifted into dream land, Severus had just made his life as a Snape harder. Much harder.

X.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.X

Severus was now six years old, cowering in his room in a new house. Liverpool was generally a nice area, and Tobias Snape's skill in carpentry had been overtly requested by his contracting company for the making of a mansion on the outskirts of town that would take six months. Naturally, he had taken his wife and adopted son (who hadn't actually be told that he was found in a park yet, and his parents assumed he'd forgotten the yelling match after his "first" burst of accidental magic) and moved into a nice little townhouse on the outskirts of town as soon as he had received word. It was four months into that period of time, and the Snape patriarch was not at all happy.

That day, Severus had been exploring the area and been caught by a truant officer when he wandered outside of his neighborhood. When he had tried to explain that he didn't attend school, claiming that he was home schooled, the officer hadn't believed him; apparently, no child wearing secondhand clothes that were too large could possibly be home schooled. In truth, Eileen had "taught" him to read when he was five. Whenever she was off doing her waitress job at a local restaurant, he was left home with various secondhand and library books on mathematics, history, and other basic subjects to read on. So, technically, he was taught at home. But he couldn't tell the officer that he was being left home alone for hours at a time unless he wanted his mother and Tobias placed on trial for neglect. While Severus wouldn't mind the latter, Eileen had done too much for him to betray her like that.

So, Severus had claimed that he'd given his mother the slip when they were at the restaurant that she worked at. Problem: she worked on the other side of town and the restaurant manager wouldn't even know what Severus looked like. But it was too late, as the truant officer had put him in the back of her car and driven him to where he said he had been, only to find that Eileen had gone home already. Problem: if Severus had been with her, why had she just left and not searched for him when he vanished?

The truant officer had then driven _back_ to Severus' neighborhood, looking thoroughly miffed, and banged her hand on the dark mahogany door that led to the Snape house. With Severus cowering behind her in his too-large flannel shirt and mesh sport shorts on a chilly November day, Tobias Snape had opened the door. Of course, he had been all smiles and apologies, but the rage was well hidden.

"Thank you for finding him, Officer! My wife has been looking for him for hours – poor kid gets lost a lot I'm afraid – and I've been holding down the fort in case he managed to wander home or someone found him and called," Tobias had explained in his best "I've done nothing wrong" voice, which was surprisingly well done.

Naturally, the Officer (Ms. Kunkle) had decided to impress the importance of a good education, because _obviously_ no child attending a proper school would have wandered off, or else they would think to bring along a map if they did. "Standardized education is the foundation of our society!" She had said, spilling her doctrine. "Why, it's been proven that children who don't go to school can't get any proper jobs and are very awkward when dealing with other people." Severus could see the imaginary wheels in his "father's" mind turning, could tell his thought patterns even without his burgeoning skills with legilimancy (which, while weak, were enough to tell truth from lies and determine internal monologue).

"Yes, I do see where you're coming from," Tobias had acquiesced. "Severus is a bright boy, we thought perhaps being pressed to learn at another pace wouldn't be good for him until he was old enough to manage his time... but..." With Ms. Kunkle satisfied that Severus' parents would be at the very least _considering_ that he attend school, she left.

Even Severus was impressed with his father's acting skill, because as soon as the sound of the stylish 1964 Volkswagon retreating up the gravel driveway had faded, the man had turned into a flying rage and grabbed the "child" by the front of his shirt. Just as the front door was opened to admit Eileen (who took the bus to and from work), Severus was thrown into his room, head smacking against the nearest corner of his box spring mattress.

That brings everything to the present, as Tobias turned around to leave Severus crawling into a corner to prevent any kicks to his back. The older man marched into the hall and stormed down the stairs that led directly to the front door. There was shouting, always shouting, fighting, and screaming. What Tobias didn't know was that Eileen had warded the house to prevent any neighbors from hearing anything beyond a standard fight between a husband and wife.

Severus got up from the floor, approaching the stairs. He was dizzy, very dizzy, but he clutched the railing for dear life and staggered down the stairs to stop them. Anything to stop the pounding in his head!

The small boy managed to stand without wavering too badly when he was on level ground and kept his eyes straight as he looked for the source of the noise. His mother was standing on one end of their new, secondhand couch that they had purchased after the latest move. With a small mental giggle, he thought that the dark green color would go perfectly in the Slytherin dungeons, and the pale gray carpet made everything distinctly fitting in with the house of his own future and mother's past. Then he noticed a splash of red across his mother's cream blouse. It wasn't Tobias Snape's blood, that much was obvious.

It was odd, because while Severus was certain he had a mild concussion, everything seemed strangely clear. He saw the bloody lump that was his mother's nose, obviously broken, and the crimson flow that extended from it to her chin where it oozed down her neck and onto her blouse. When he stepped forward, it was no longer in a swaying stagger, but the start of a swift sprint. However, he didn't really notice. Once again, he found himself between his parents, ready to protect Eileen as Tobias crept forward.

"What do you want whelp?" Tobias growled. Severus just did his level best to stare him down with his most practiced Snape-glare (which was pretty good considering his age). Not that it stopped Tobias or anything; he simply drew his belt from his pants, ready to dish out some punishment to the seemingly impetuous child before him. Not for the first time in his new life, Severus cursed his Gryffindor stupidity.

"You will not touch him," the voice was low and powerful. A deadly tone came from beside Severus, and he looked to find his mother, Eileen, standing with her wand arm extended. A blast of red light escaped it as she glared at the man she had married, professed to love 'til death did they part.

Not ten minutes later there was a whip crack outside, which was just long enough for Eileen to fix her nose and explain properly about the magical world. (She had always said magic was real, buying him the potions set as proof when he was small, and in the past two years claimed Severus a wizard, but until now, Severus had not been told of the world he knew he was to join.) A weedy man in a tweed suit admitted himself to the house just as Eileen was finishing her explanation about Azkaban and Dementors, but he was ignored until he cleared his voice.

"Ma'am, I'm here on the behalf of the Department for the Misuse of Magic. We received an alert that there was a stunner fired at a muggle, is that accurate?" He asked, not giving a care that, perhaps, the child in the room was a muggle. Eileen nodded without any hesitation. "May I assume that you are Eileen Snape nee Prince?" Again, a nod. "And you hexed your husband? On what grounds?"

"Tobias Snape is a very devoutly religious man, Mr...?" Eileen didn't get a reply regarding the inquiry for his name. "He found out that our son, Severus, is a wizard, and reacted in a manner that was shameful and violent. I thought to neutralize him long enough to explain what was happening to dear Severus and get the boy away before my husband awoke." The fact that her nose was a still coated with sticky, drying blood and her blouse drenched in her own, at least, made for good evidence that the attack had been deserved.

"I see," nodded the Ministry representative. "Regardless, you will be required to attend a Ministerial Hearing on November the thirty-second –" he paused and blinked, looking down at the parchment in his hand before shaking his head in exasperation. "I mean, the _twenty-third_ and you are to bring your husband. Until then, your wand will be held by the Ministry. If you do not attend, you will be placed in Azkaban for one year, without bail. Have a good day, Mrs. Snape."

There was a trial three days later, and Eileen lost. She spent the next two months, until the end of Tobias' contract in Liverpool, in the Dementors' lair, and Severus was left to the wrath of his "father."

X.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.X

Life in the past two and a half years had not been good for the Snape family. Eileen had spent two months in prison, Severus had been picked up by truant officers twice more in various towns they lived in before his mother agreed to place him in muggle school, and Tobias had not been able to hold down a proper job. Everyday Severus was forced to endure going to school with a nearly empty lunchbox and in secondhand cloths; once there, he was forced to deal with schoolyard bullies who could beat him to a pulp. Sure, he was better fed than Harry had been, but the "child" was naturally small. Complete bully bait.

Perhaps it was a lucky thing that his parents had decided to move next to a suburb of Manchester. There was a new housing development going up, and Tobias had been hired to work on it. They were moving to a street called "Spinner's End," near a rather brownish river, in the suburb that held both a sort of slummish area (Spinner's End) and a more high class neighborhood around the nearest park. For some reason, it seemed familiar. He assumed that, at some point, he might have slept in the wreckage of one of the houses here; it made sense as he'd spent so long on the run and just living in the no-man's land of Great Britain. He also theorized that, perhaps living in Manchester could help build his persona as a surly, mean person. Surliness and rudeness were supposedly thought of as admirable and honest around the area. Or so he'd heard.

Nine year old Severus Snape had just finished putting his furniture away in the oddly spacious (and cheap) house that Tobias was renting-to-own. He had been upgraded to a normal-sized twin bed from the little plastic-covered toddler bed recently, and he hid his beginners' potions kit underneath it. His magic had stopped responding to manufactured emotions by then, and all his toys (especially the lion) were long gone anyway. Nine was far too old for toys.

"Severus," Eileen called up the stairs, "your father and I are going to finish organizing the house. Why don't you take a look around the neighborhood?" Ever since her stint in Azkaban, Eileen had been hardly sane, but her medication (brewed by Severus himself) kept her calm and collected normally. She always referred to Tobias as his father, no matter who she spoke to. "Severus' father blah blah blah..." "You're his father and blah blah blah..." Never referring to him as her husband or by his given name. Ironic considering the man was only his blood relation through magic.

Regardless of all this, Severus obeyed without question. He made sure not to dirty the carpet with his shoes and retreated from the house to explore the area. It wasn't really a slum, now that he got a good look at the area, but after driving through the nicer part of town it certainly felt like it. Small lawns filled with dying grass, rundown cars, and peeling paint seemed the mode of decoration. He hopped over several potholes as he extended his walking radius.

Only six blocks away he found the local primary school, which looked nice enough. A concrete building with a fence around a wooden play structure and several murals painted on the side of the school itself gave the look that, while old, the school was well loved. Severus smiled slightly. He would be attending that school; hopefully there were fewer bullies, or more vigilant recess duties, at this school.

As he ventured further, Severus wandered into the nicer neighborhood where children whizzed by on bicycles (no helmets! It still amazed him how few safety precautions there were in the sixties), played with sidewalk chalk or some such thing. He smiled slightly, rather sad that he'd never really gotten to take part in such frivolities; he didn't even know how to ride a bike. The eyes of watchful parents looked down on him, not liking his secondhand look while those in his own physical age grouping were curious, yet put off by his surly look. In mere minutes he reached the local park.

It was rather rundown, more so than the wooden one at the primary school. A rusty swing set was off to one side next to a small patch of dark purple petunias while a jungle gym stood nearby. The rest was patchy grass, a small fenced in area for dogs, and a few picnic benches. Severus wandered through the jungle gym, small as it was, and finally stopped by the swings. By the time Harry had been old enough to wander on his own without suspicion or his guardians being angry, he was too tall for the Little Whinging swing set to do more than brood. Severus decided to make up for that a bit by sitting in the middle swing, which was just the right height for him, and pumping his legs as he had seen children do.

Amazed at how similar it was to flying, Severus let himself go, pretending he was Neil Armstrong who would land on the moon itself in the next month. His legs pumped him forward and back, forward and back. It was like he could touch the sky! Now he could see why muggle children enjoyed swings so much; this was as close to flying a broom as they could get.

"Excuse me!" Severus stopped moving as soon as that one voice called out and had to force himself not to blush even as he came back down the earth, feet dragging on the dirt beneath the swing. "Could you move over one? My big sister and I want to swing together." Severus acquiesced without complaint, keeping his eyes on his toes. He was so stupid! How could he have allowed himself to get distracted like that. "Thank you! Come on Tuney!"

Severus sighed slightly, knowing he couldn't let himself do that again. It removed his mind from his goal. He was 45, mentally, not nine as he appeared! A finger tapped his shoulder as he started to walk away, and he turned about. The sight that met him was far from what he had ever expected.

Brilliant green eyes that he had seen only on two people in his life and vivid red hair, a pale face with a cute smattering of freckles... He knew that face. It was his mother... no, Eileen was his mother. This was his _mum. _Lily Evans.

"You can swing with us if you like," her voice had a lilting tone to it. "We don't have cooties, I promise!"

Severus ran away before he even had time to consider the offer.

X.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.X

**A/n: I think this turned out well... but yeah, that's the first part of Walking on a Broken Past! Not what you expected, I'm sure... depending on what you expected, that may or may not be such a good thing though. Part two is currently under a small reconstruction and will be posted when I've fixed it.  
**

**This idea just sort of... popped into my head, and I rather liked it. I dunno how anyone else will, but it's... interesting. I've never come across such a story, but if another exists, please point me in its direction! I already know what I'm doing for this story (not chapter by chapter, but I do know what I intend to do, no worries), so I think it would be interesting to see if someone else had a different interpretation on what could happen if this were true.**

**As you no doubt figured, the Lily/Snape thing is where the Oedipal stuff comes in... but Sev isn't interested. Just want to make that clear. I have reasoning behind a lot of decisions in his life, so... yeah. Below you can find a timeline.**

**Timeline:**

**Harry leaves to hunt horcruxes (July 1997)  
Discovery of Voldemort's inability to cross open water without Harry's say-so (March 2006)  
Great muggle/mudblood purge and start of nuclear war (June 6, 2006) (Severus Snape died in the Purge)  
Most wizards leave Britain (between June and September of 2006)  
Harry goes back in time (July 31, 2017) (in canon, this is 1 month before the epilogue)  
Severus adopted by Snapes (January 9, 1960)  
Severus hurts Tobias Snape with magic (March 12, 1964)  
Eileen attacks Tobias (November 12, 1966)  
Severus meets Lily (July 7, 1969) (Lunar landing was July 20, 1969, but he already knew about all that anyway...)**


	2. Lily

Walking on a Broken Past

**Words: 10,386**

**Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, Severus Snape, or any of JKR's creations in general. I do not own the theory of time travel, the multiverse, or the "oh noes, the second war lasts forever!" plot device for that matter. What I do own (I think...) is the precise twist this story has, as I have never seen anything of the sort before. I do not own nuclear winter, weapons, or the cold war. **

**Warnings: Character death. Gory descriptions. Child abuse. Spouse abuse. Suicide. Murder. Not completely canon, even discounting the AU it starts in. ****Mostly canon through books six and parts of seven (main exceptions being the very end and epilogue)****. Weasley bashing. Dumbledore bashing. Potter bashing. Order bashing. Hogwarts professors bashing. Glorifying of evil and Voldemort. Nerdy moments. Fake spells created on a Latin translator are also included. Occasional religious comments (but I'm an atheist, so they're kinda widespread and not from the religious perspective). Lots of angst. Coarse language. Drug abuse. Alcohol abuse. Slash pairings. Oedipal undertones. Sexual innuendo. Mentions of sex (but the actual act thereof will not be described in this story).**

X.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.X

_Chapter 2: Lily_

"_Well, birthdays are merely symbolic of how another year has gone by and how little we've grown. No matter how desperate we are that someday a better self will emerge, with each flicker of the candles on the cake, we know it's not to be, that for the rest of our sad, wretched pathetic lives, this is who we are to the bitter end. Inevitably, irrevocably; happy birthday? No such thing." Jerry Seinfeld_

Just as Harry Potter had always anticipated the opportunity to leave his "family" behind at school, Severus Snape waited through the summer to see his. Not that the girl he was so excited to see on a daily basis knew who she was to him, but that was irrelevant. He would be attending primary school with his mother for the next nine years of his life, after all! Both the muggle and magical variants at that. He would be damned if he were to let this opportunity slip through his fingers.

But maybe, he was damned. For that whole summer he had gone to the park and watched as a nine-year-old Lily Evans played with her ten-year-old sister, Petunia Evans. Always pretending games or the swings, but Severus soon learned quite a lot about his mum. Lily didn't have a lot of friends her age, but she flitted from group to group. Small children especially loved her for her imaginative stories and little magic tricks. She had a love of flying through the air, free as a bird, that easily rivaled his own… and there was something truly special about her magically; she had the rare ability to manipulate her magic without depending on a wand or emotion-driven accidental bursts like Severus used to be able to use. It was a skill that he had desperately hoped to cultivate, but failed to. Perhaps if he had had the skill there would have been genuine concern about Harry Potter becoming another Tom Riddle.

September had come to them at a crawl, but it had come. While other children prayed that the sunny season would never end, and had it pass too quickly, Severus had wished it to die a very painful death and been disappointed as it took eternity to bow to his whims. When the fourth year of school had finally been introduced to his miserable little life on September the second, he had been so excited that he unwittingly had sapped extra sugar from the jar to turn his soggy cornflakes into a soggy sugar cereal. It was only by luck that neither Eileen nor Tobias noticed.

Dressed in his best clothes (a slightly baggy black t-shirt with a snarky comment on it – which surprised him, as he thought that fad hadn't existed until the nineties – and some barely-too-long blue jeans), he looked smaller and paler than normal, but not too much. His hair was clean, though it still bore the unnatural sheen that could easily be mistaken for grease, and tied back to keep it from his sallow flesh. Complete with sunburn from his summer of stalking his mum at the park, he appeared as any normal child might.

The walk to school went by very fast as he too each step in a brisk, Snape-esque fashion. The old cement building stood as it had at summer's start when he had first seen it, and saw a line-up of teachers with different numbered and lettered signs above them. A long table stood in front of it, students swarming it as they searched for their nametags and hoping beyond hope that there friends would be in the same class as them for the coming school year. Finding the "S" section, Severus scanned the area, finding a bright yellow nametag bearing the legend "Severus T. Snape, 4-B". In front of the teacher by the sign in question was the person (girl) he was most intent on seeing. His beautiful, red-haired mum would be in his fourth year class! Surely he could build up the courage to speak with her by the end of the year? Befriending Lily could very well be his first step to a brighter future, if it hadn't changed already.

Class began half an hour later as the stragglers finally appeared. Everyone was seated in alphabetical order around four seated tables, leaving Severus without the object of his admiration. He sat, instead, with a girl named Alexx Sanders, a boy named Tony Terrace, and a girl who was an unfortunate bit of nomenclature called Mandy Wanker (luckily, most of the class remained oblivious to the actual meaning of her surname, or else she would be victim to many a childish taunt). The two girls were obviously very good friends as they chatted about their respective summers, and Terrace leaned across the aisle to talk so someone at the P-R table. Severus was, essentially, alone.

In all his past classes, Severus had been stood up in front of the class by his teacher for a quick introduction and to point out that he was a new students, drawing unnecessary and unwanted attention to him. This time, however, because he had started the year properly for once, it was likely assumed that he had been in a separate class by each of his fellows. He was unsure if he preferred this anonymity to the giggles he always was welcomed with for his odd name (though several name games at the start of the class remedied that one). His only consolation was that, from his seat, he could see Lily framed in golden light by the un-shuttered window.

That first day of class began as Severus assumed most beginnings of the year did. The teacher (Mr. VanSickle) introduced himself to the assembled students and then went over protocol for fire drills, earthquake drills, and nuclear warfare drills. The Boy-Who-Lived-to-be-a-greasy-git remembered from his previous classes and was resigned to the third drill remaining for some time yet, as the tension of the Cold War wouldn't dissipate until Harry Potter was in Hogwarts. The fact that there measures wouldn't actually save anyone from the dropping of a real Nuclear Weapon didn't help his peace of mind at all, but Severus did know that the actions of one wizard was not enough to bring nuclear war to Britain... well, no one aside from Voldemort, but he wouldn't let that bastard instigate shit. Not this time.

When recess was called to life by the great bell that all students worshipped (even on the first day of school), it couldn't have been soon enough. Severus couldn't remember any first-days from before Hogwarts, but it _was_ rather boring, compared to the magical school. The little primary school had swings available for recess before lunch, however, and he could watch Lily playing on them easily. In a school of perhaps six hundred excitable students, they staggered the lunches play times. While second, third, and fourth forms had recess, the Kindergarteners, first, and fifth forms were eating their lunches, and vice a versa. That meant that there was not Petunia around to get on Severus' nerves, even if he was _technically_ the uninvited party to their playtimes.

There was an art to swinging, and it was an art that Lily had long since mastered. She was perfect in every way when she flew like that, in a gentle arc to land on her feet. Grace that was unmatchable, the exact way her hair fluttered in her back wind, and, just at the peak of her swing, she could jump and land with the agility of a cat. Severus had once heard the phrase "art in motion," and this had to be it. If anyone could be so graceful in the air as his mum, Severus would eat his shoe (for he had no hat). There was always a swing clear for her, maybe because everyone noticed how amazing she was on a swing, or maybe it was magic, but that center swing _belonged_ to Lily Evans and no one else.

It was that way every day of the year.

He couldn't build up the courage necessary to do much more than nod slightly at her, and even when Severus and Lily had been paired up for the fourth grade science fair (they made polymers out of borax and paste) all conversation was business oriented. No one ever caught him watching his mum, and Eileen never noticed that anything was off with her son (unsurprising considering the strength of her medication), or else never brought it up. Even his "father" was a bit better, though that was likely due to Tobias not wanting Severus' teachers or classmates to notice any suspicious bruises.

As Lily and Petunia approached their usual swings, Severus could hear their idle chatter from behind his usual bush. They were talking about Petunia's upgrade to secondary school after summer was over, as it was, by then, mid July; she had been accepted to the sister school of the Smelting's Academy and would be away much of the next seven years. It explained how she met Vernon, at least.

He watched avidly as Lily approached the swings, taking the plastic seat in the center, as always, and rattling the chains a bit. It was just the three in the park today, as an overcast sky and chilly winds drove away any other sane persons from the outdoor play areas. But Lily, a creature of habit, and Petunia, who was charged to keep her sister safe, and Severus, who liked to watch the younger of the two, were not in the same category as other people. So, Lily's small feet climbed the dip in the dirt below her feet and began flying until she was nearly ten feet off the ground. Then, she did as she loved best; she loosened her grip on the ice cold chains, even as her sister protested from her own swing, and let go.

Her arc was a thing of perfection, so great that even a master of Geometry (though Severus was pretty sure that, not only did muggles not do masteries, but none were dull enough to do it in Geometry) could find no fault and would fall to the ground weeping at its beauty. Hands trailed behind her as her body worked at righting itself in the air, magic aiding in her struggle as she was propelled twice as far was would be thought (by muggles) physically possible to be thrown from a swing. But, then, there was quite a difference between flight and being thrown. Delicate feet sheathed in green rubber rain boots – for it was expected to rain later in the day – touched ground too lightly to be considered natural by those not versed in the ways of magic. Even as Lily giggled at her fun, Severus heaved a small sigh of relief. Just because it was fun for her didn't mean he couldn't worry!

"Mummy told you not to!" The whining, grating tone that was Petunia Evans made Severus twitch, but he continued watching. Petunia was stomping her fashionable new sandals on the ground, crunching the dried dirt beneath her feet, with her hands on her hips. "Mummy said you weren't allowed, Lily!"

It was the usual scene Petunia made when Lily used magic, and it was obvious the younger girl was used to it as well. "But I'm fine!" She giggled, shaking an arm in example. "Tuney, look at this! Watch what I can do!" It was obvious that the bad taste in nicknames that Petunia had in the case of her own fat son (or, rather, would have) came from the Evans side of the family. If Severus were at all the laughing type, he would likely be having as hard a time to deal with the name "Tuney" as he had "Dinky Diddydums." It was positively hilarious.

Suddenly, Snape had to duck slightly as Lily approached his bush. He peered between lower limbs that before, now only seeing the girls' feet and, as Lily bent down, her hand. Deft fingers plucked a flower recently fallen from the bush, twirling the stem between her thumb and forefinger as she contemplated it. She stepped back and turned slightly to face her sister again, with the wilting blossom held lightly in her palm. As Petunia approached curiously, she – and Severus by extension – had front row seats to see Lily's latest trick: the Amazing Un-Wilting and Re-Blossoming Bloom. Severus was enraptured. Petunia was horrified.

"Stop it!" shrieked the horse-faced girl, placing her hands over her mouth as she watched the unnaturalness before her. It was a trick that Severus had long since gotten over – but still wished he possessed. This particular aspect of Lily's magic he had seen her practice many times over the past two weeks. She wanted it perfect for her sister. Her ungrateful sister who did _not_ like the special treat.

"It's not hurting you," Lily cast her eyes to the ground as she closed her hands around the blossom, closing it off. Severus knew that, just like most every other trick she used to get Petunia to understand, she would never use it again. The flower, now wilted, brown and dead, fell to the scraggly grass beneath their feet.

"It's not right," Petunia stated, voice wavering as she seemed to realize what her proclamation had really meant to her sister. How could that impetuous girl insult Lily like that? Magic was the most natural thing in the world, far more natural than Petunia's _normality_! "How do you do it?"

"Isn't it obvious?" Severus had stood up from behind his bush, speaking without thinking. Oh Merlin, he was actually _doing it!_ He was going to talk to Lily, finally! Although it hadn't been his plan – Morgana only knew how many times he'd played the potential scene through his head in the past year – Petunia shrieked at his sudden revealing of himself and ran towards the swings a few steps. He was pleased to note that, even though Lily was obviously surprised, she didn't run like Petunia had. She was, after all, a Gryffindor.

Large emerald eyes took him in, and Severus almost didn't hear her say, "What's obvious?"

"I know what you are," he replied, again without much thought. His voice was quiet as he said this, his eyes darting toward Petunia at the swings. In all honesty, it had sounded a _lot_ better in his head than out his mouth, but Severus needed this introduction. _Lily_ needed this introduction. If he could teach her about the wizarding world a year early... well, he didn't know what it might mean, but it had to be done. Maybe, if his mother trusted him, there would never be a blood feud between the family's of Snape and Potter (which, considering a Potter now _was_ the first ever wizarding Snape, would be ironic and perhaps not wholly possible). There were so many possibilities of what could happen, what could change, and Severus was determined to make it all positive. He could be Lily's best friend, get her into Slytherin, and make everyone realize not only the power that a muggleborn witch could wield, but that not all of Salazar's children (or those with his gifts) were evil by default.

"What do you mean?" Confusion... yes, Severus could deal with confusion. This was his chance!

"You're... you're a witch," he lowered his tone so that there was no way that Petunia could hear him... but Lily didn't seem to like what he said at all.

"_That's_ not a very nice thing to say to somebody!" Lily snapped angrily and turned about to stomp her boots angrily on the dry ground just as her sister had before, but in the opposite direction. Severus could have sworn he cried "No!" to her, but he wasn't sure, as he was more concerned with scrabbling over the bush to reach out to her, arms cart-wheeling in the air. He felt warm in his cheeks, but everything was suddenly so cold. He hugged his "father's" oversized fleece jacket to himself as he got over the bush and attempted to approach the young witch. Both girls now stared at him as if he was even odder than they thought.

"You are," his tone was slightly pleading, and this time he did not hide his words from Petunia. "You _are_ a witch. I've been watching you for a while," Severus realized just how stalker-ish that sounded – and entirely appropriate as he _had_ been stalking the girl for a year – which made him glad that no one really knew much about creepers in the sixties and seventies and that "stranger danger" didn't really exist yet. "But there's nothing wrong with that. My mum's one," she was right in front of him, and she was a witch, "and I'm a wizard." She would understand, she had to!

Petunia's biting laugh struck at him, but he wouldn't let that bite taint him. She was only a year old than the pair of magically inclined people (Severus recalled seeing her family birthday party in November at this very park, and Lily's in March) and already she had that look that Harry Potter had been subject to and Severus already hated very much. That look that she had given to a messy haired boy with bright green eyes when he burned the bacon and she called him a freak. What she said to Severus was close enough.

"A wizard!" She snorted, suddenly brave in the face on the mad little boy in too-large clothes. "_I_ know who _you_ are," of course she would, and so did Lily, but had that to do with anything? "You're that Snape boy!" She turned her face to Lily, as if talking behind Severus' back and to his face. This sort of backhanded treatment was how she had dealt with things – would deal with things – for Harry Potter, if they boy ever went into her custody. "They live down Spinner's End by the river." By the way she was speaking, one would think him a little ragamuffin! But her tone turned cool and calculating soon enough. "Why were you spying on us?"

"Haven't been spying," that, of course, was a lie, but Severus wasn't about to mention it. They both knew anyway; he'd admitted to it only a minute ago! So he glared spitefully at Petunia for latching onto that _one_ statement that might otherwise have gone ignored. "Wouldn't spy on _you_ anyway. _You're_ a muggle." He couldn't take this sort of abuse, not from her. Not again. He had lived with the woman – now girl – for sixteen years and heard litany after insult spouted about his "horrible, freaky, slut of a mother" and he would tolerate no more abuse from her for it!

But they left. All Severus really noticed was his mother turning an angry glare at him and leaving the park... leaving _their_ park, with _her_ swing and _his_ hiding places that no one could ever find him in. When she disappeared from sight, he slumped onto the ground on his knees. It wasn't supposed to be this way! She was supposed to accept him, and then they could be best friends, and everything would be different! Because he wasn't Snape, he wasn't a greasy git who hated muggleborns, and surely that would change things. Surely... surely he could make it better.

He didn't call out. What right had he to disrupt her life, anyway? Lily didn't know, would likely never know, the truth of their relationship, and he could never let her know. No one could know, no one but him, because _he_ had to change things gradually. Because if it changed, and he didn't know, there might not ever be any prophecy. If that thrice-damned prophecy was never made and baby-Harry never marked with Eiwahz, then there would be no reprieve from the Dark Lord's fury. The fact that Severus no longer had Harry Potter's infamous scar had potential to be problematic in and of itself; he might not be the proper candidate for the eradication. Voldemort had to almost-die and be resurrected before his horcruxes could be destroyed, lest he feel their destruction, and they had to be destroyed before the turning of the Millennium. The Y2K phenomenon that was supposed to blank out all muggle technology on earth had boosted the Dark Ritual that he had been using far too much. He would be, by then, unbeatable. And Severus knew that anyone else would change everything far too quickly. Even (or especially) Lily.

Standing from his desolate position, Severus made his way to the swings, not wanting to think anymore. His feet dug into the dirt as he shifted into the left swing. It was a position often used when he was an angsty teenager; why not when he was doomed to be a slimy git who no one, not even his own parents, would like? He could… but no. How could Severus even think consider losing himself to the winds? But _Merlin_ he wanted to fly, to zoom and swerve as he used to on his Firebolt. Had the real Snape played Quidditch at all? He doubted it. Even as he ran through reason after reason for why he _shouldn't_ let himself be absorbed by the sensation of the wind in his hair, long-fingered hands glided up the icy chains and his feet carried him backwards, taking the seat as far as his legs would allow, and let go.

Cold air nipped at pale cheeks, making his blouse (borrowed from his mother as she'd forgotten to do laundry the day previous) billow as he flew. Dark hair blew around his face, obscuring the plains of gray that made up the dreary summer sky. He didn't mind if his clothes billowed (they would when he was older) nor if his hair was keeping him from the clouds, because every time he might have touched them he fell back to the earth. But for those few moments, he touched the sky. And that was enough.

He didn't leave that swing until his legs were burning and the sky had let loose a torrent of water. It was always warmer after the rain.

X.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.X

Lily didn't come to the park for a week after that. Even though Severus came every day, he didn't see the one person he craved to view all that week, even for a moment. That was longest stretch of time since she had gone to her Grandmother's for the Christmas holidays in Surrey that had gone with seeing neither hide nor hair of his mum. He didn't like it. He had to know she was okay, that everything would be alright.

So, when Lily came up to _him_ as he sat on a limb of the willow over the swings, to say he was surprised would be an enormous understatement. Just like a squirrel, his delicate flower of a Mum-to-be scurried up the trunk of the large tree to rest on the long, crooked branch that had been chosen as Severus' throne for the day. The limb was jounced slightly as she crawled forward, using the next one over to balance, before delicate feet were dangling over the side and Lily was seated beside him. He stared. Surely… it was an illusion, right? He was _hallucinating_, that much was quite obvious. Lily had already denounced him, sided with her nosey giraffe of a sister, and denied the path and future that he represented.

"Am I… am I really a witch? Is what I do _really_ magic?" She whispered quietly, the lilting voice of ten-year-old Lily Evans drifting pleasantly between them.

Severus looked at her sideways as she sat on his left, legs swinging and causing the branch to waver slightly. First he saw her small, delicate nose, but this was quickly ignored in favor of her eyes. People said that Harry Potter had his mother's eyes, or they would, but Severus disagreed. Harry Potter's eyes had been hardened by tragedy, glowed with anger, and had long since forgotten how to smile; Lily's eyes were completely innocent of all that, her eyes glowing with childish optimism and curiosity, and it was obvious she did little but smiling with her face. To say that such a warrior could have _those_ bright green eyes was an insult to her memory. Harry had never been innocent. Severus had never been innocent.

Realizing that he was meant to answer, Severus nodded. "There's a whole magical world out there, hidden from muggles – non-magical people like your family and my father – and we're a part of it. I mentioned that my mother was a witch, didn't I?" He hadn't. He'd mentioned his mum, who he was telling this to, not his mother, but she nodded anyway. She didn't know, after all. "And I'm a wizard. Next year, you and I... we'll be invited to the best wizarding secondary school in Europe, maybe even in the world. I'm not really sure. But, everything there is so _magical_..." He sighed, turning away from the girl to face the sun high above him. The blue was uninterrupted by even a single cloud, the perfect image of a Summer's day, unlike the last time they had met.

"And how do I know you're right?" It was not a statement that would be expected from someone so innocent, so pure, as Lily, but rather someone a bit more world weary, but, then again, Severus had so much experience with muggles that he knew most children didn't adjust well to the knowledge of magic at their first introduction. "Maybe I'm just _different_. Did you ever think of that? I know I'm not... _normal_ like Petunia, but I'm not _evil_ like a witch, either! And _you_ can't convince me otherwise." Those smiling emeralds shone with a fiery defiance that was familiar, but Severus didn't care to place it. This was Lily; pure, innocent Lily. He would teach her all he could about Hogwarts and the Wizarding World.

"Have you ever done something you couldn't explain, when you were angry or scared? Bigger even than when you fly off of the swings or opening and closing a flower like the other day... like disappearing and reappearing instantaneously..." he drew on experience from when he apparated onto the school roof in Surrey as Harry. Could she understand? He hoped so. "I once turned a teacher's wig blue when we were going over the history of the war with the Americans." There, something funny to break the ice... well, Ron and Hermione had found it funny when Harry told them. It had been so long ago, he hardly remembered, but he did, and he hoped it would help. Just a bit.

"Well..." Lily paused in thought, gnawing on the right side of her bottom lip, "Mum says that, when I was a baby and I used to gnaw on her hair, she got it cut to save herself the split ends... but I made it grow back. And when Da' kept sweets from me on Halloween once, they whizzed right by him into my hands... I can't really explain it. There was nothing I really did before; I wanted and I received. Everything just sort of _happened_. But nowadays I can do this stuff whenever I like... can you do it like that? If you're a wizard, and I'm a witch, how do we do what we do?"

There was a sudden eagerness about her. Not the cautious curiosity, but a mood that reminded Severus very much of Hermione. It was familiar, and endearing, really, and he loved that about the past. When he saw a precocious in those last few years, he didn't mourn that they were born into the world when and where they were; he imagined what sort of future they could have. What was ahead of Lily, if Severus could save her? Teaching? Perhaps she would be an Unspeakable. With this small outreach of kindness, he could give that to her.

"Only really powerful witches and wizards can do magic the way you do," Severus waved his hands about a bit, shaking his head to the same rhythm, simultaneously hoping for a more eloquent way to phrase what he was saying and denying that he could do as his mum could, "that... _wandless_ power that you have. We need a focus, a magic wand – used to be staves I think – that is linked to our magic and can tell about our baser natures and our very souls. A completely innocent person might have a wand made of Holly –" like Harry had, " – the Holy Wood, while someone with a killer's potential might get Yew, the tree of death, life, and rebirth. And there' the cores... those can be even more telling. I've heard of wands changing themselves as their owners grow, if the bond is strong enough, but usually wizards will simply outgrow their wand.

"Everyone gets their first wand when they're eleven, because wandless skills are rare, so no one teaches them at any of the Secondary schools. Every kid has bursts of accidental magic – like summoning sweets – but hardly more than that. What you do... that's something special. The good kind, I mean..." It was a minor miracle that he had stumbled along so far already without dropping his train of thought, even if he _had_ practiced this speech a million times. "You'll probably be the best witch of our generation."

They sat in silence for a while, Lily playing with her feet. Severus watched her carefully, wishing he knew her train of thought. He could use his increasing talent at Legilimancy, and he often did on unsuspecting muggle passerby, but he couldn't breach his mother's trust like that, even if she didn't _really_ know him. There was a difference between practicing gathering intelligence and doing something that was so morally repugnant as spying on his own mum. What did he care of he was spying on people he didn't know? He might be doing just that after Hogwarts, even in it, but never to Lily. So her thoughts remained in her head.

"Wanna play tag?" She asked suddenly. Severus blinked, then nodded, and dropped with an ease born of practice from their throne to land on the sturdier branch below. His knees bent just right, as always, and he dropped the five feet without any adverse affects but the need to reach out to a limb at shoulder height to steady himself. He looked up at the red-haired beauty with a smile, already seeing that she was eager to try that particular fall herself, and he thought he felt his lips twitch upwards. Almost like a smile. Maybe... maybe this could work.

X.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.X

Fifth form called into being something that Severus had sorely missed: free seating. Gone were the days of the seating chart and the dreaded "alphabetical order", for now, as he was in the final year of Primary school, Severus could sit where ever he wanted in the classroom. So he was in the front, sharing a desk with Lily. He would have preferred the back, as he mostly knew what was being taught (though the science lessons were different, sometimes flawed, and history always felt incomplete), but Lily had an insatiable thirst for knowledge and felt front and center was the place most conducive to her learning. He couldn't bring himself to argue with her over something so trivial, nor to part with his only company in all of the small town for something so simple, so he stayed. There was no way that he would let anyone steal his Lily; not even the fact that she didn't know she was his could stop him, because _no one_ would take her away. He needed her, not only to change the future, but for his own peace of mind to know that she was safe.

"Sometimes, Sev, I think you might be a genius," Lily sighed. The math tests from two days previous had just been handed back, and Severus hadn't missed a single equation while dealing with the one hundred multiplication problems; Lily had only managed to get thirty-nine out of them completed in the allotted minute, and three of those had been wrong. They had the first and third topmost scores in the class for that particular test and Severus had received a "gold star" on the top of his. He merely shrugged in response to Lily's praise. He'd never been good with compliments as Harry Potter, which had only gotten worse after the war. By the time Severus had come to this point in his life, with the added insults and various disparaging remarks of his "father" in the mix, the man-turned-boy could not take compliments in the normal fashion. "I'm being serious! It's like you know _everything_ sometimes."

Again, Severus shrugged. "You know I was home schooled until halfway through second year," as if that explained everything all by itself. "I read ahead a lot. It's not hard." In reality, he had been hoping to skip a few grades when he first started, in hopes of learning more from a muggle education on the sciences (particularly Chemistry and Physics) than most (if not any) wizards. With Lily alongside him, he didn't want to skip a year at all, it was merely second nature to do well, to surpass the rest of his class in silence. While one would have been hard pressed to call Harry Potter a fast learner outside of dire circumstances, Severus Snape, the real one, had been one of the brightest minds of his generation, as proved by his Potions Mastery at age 18 (a record after education became standardized). Even if that man no longer existed, Severus would do his name justice. If the greasy git of the dungeons had survived the Purge, Severus had little doubt that the two would have gotten along splendidly. By that point, their personalities were quite similar. Even in a child's body, he knew himself to be near identical to his nonexistent, ex-to-be Potions Master, both in attitude and appearance.

"Reading ahead doesn't cover you knowing everything we're taught, let alone being able to do the entire 'Multiplication Minute' exercise exactly right every time! You didn't even have problems with the algebra lesson last week," Lily huffed indignantly. In the future, the Little Whinging Primary would use the one hundred problems in a minute program almost religiously from third form on. "You'll help me study for the next one, won't you?" The nod was automatic. Who was he to deny her when he owed her so much, including his life? The teacher, Mrs. Reynolds, didn't like their talking, however, as class returned to session.

An hour later saw them both out of the school, away from the closed walls and into the open winter air, barely escaping detention for talking in class. They were already en route to the park, _their_ park, the one they met at every day for roughly six months. It was only a few blocks away, and neither could be bothered to worry about much at all. What was there to worry about? To Lily, the world was beautiful and magical. Indeed, it was much the same to Severus, though he often imagined that perhaps he had spent a night here before, broken and bloodied, or perhaps seen some survivors, huddled for warmth but dying.

There weren't even things outside the future to worry about for him, as Tobias would be out of town to work with some logger buddies of his (for no man such as that, Severus ascertained, could have real friends) while Eileen was at an appointment with St. Mungo's to see that her medication was adjusted. She had been forgetting things lately, like laundry (he'd had to wear one of her blouses for the third time in a month because she kept forgetting that her son wore clothes), but Severus didn't have to worry. Not until she returned home with the new recipe and he had to brew her new medication least ways; now he could go to the park and have a nice talk and play some games with his best friend. There was no better way to spend an afternoon than with Lily at the park… even if it _was_ terribly cold out.

Severus pulled his oversized coat, black naturally, tighter around himself, blowing a puff of warm air on his hands. The sky threatened rain as it had the first day that he had dared to approach the girl who skipped merrily along beside him, gloved hands swinging at her sides and a single red braid bouncing lightly on her back. It was ridiculous, he realized, how they must look. A bright eyed girl, the picture of an affluent girl, all set to go to a private secondary school, skipping along without a care beside a sullen boy, dark, greasy, and wearing too large of clothes, without proper winter wear, the very image of a young pauper. With the small hole in the clouds above them, simultaneously lighting the way and releasing heat into the atmosphere, he supposed it could make for a good commercial for a "help the poor" advertisement.

"Happy Birthday!" Severus snapped out of his thoughts and stared at Lily incoherently. What did she mean "Happy Birthday"?

It wasn't his birthday, was it? And since when had anyone actually said those words to him anyway? Perhaps once or twice, when he spent his birthday with the Weasleys, but not to Severus. Never to Severus. Not in his memory, because not even Eileen had ever mentioned his birthday, though he knew it was on January ninth. As they had just gotten out from Christmas Break that week (Petunia would be leaving again for school in two days) it almost made sense… but how could Lily know? He imagined that he must have said it aloud, because Lily answered.

"Mrs. Patterson, you know, the attendance secretary, told me," she murmured, teetering forward and back on her feet as she held her hands behind her back. Her backpack, curiously, lay open at her feet. "I knew you wouldn't say anything… and if I'd asked you wouldn't have told me, because… well, you're so closed off, Sev! So I asked her in September since no one else would know probably." Severus furrowed his brow. Did she really know him so well that she would know he wouldn't tell her his own birthday? He might have, really, had she asked; she was the undeniable, after all, his mum. "Oh, please don't be mad at me! Please?"

"Mad?" He blinked owlishly at the sight of Lily's bright eyes, seemingly enlarged as if to coerce him. But why on earth should she feel sorry? Why should he be mad at her? "I… I'm not mad, Lily, I promise. It's not like you did anything wrong. I'm _not_ mad… just… surprised is all." But he was angry. Severus didn't know what he was angry about just yet, but he was regardless. As he looked down, ready to brood, he realized that Lily had a package held tight in her hands which had moved in front of her at his declaration of not being mad. A birthday present. Well, such a thing wasn't _so_ surprising. He'd given her a beginner's potions set for Christmas a few weeks ago (after convincing Eileen to sell some of his brews to an Apothecary under her name) and the girl had given him The Lord of the Rings trilogy. He'd read through the series twice already since receiving it. But still he stared, dumbfounded, at the bright rainbow wrapping paper.

"I hope you like it," Lily murmured, pressing the squishy package into his hands. The paper crinkled loudly as it changed hands, though Severus held it delicately, probing it with long, thin fingers. It felt like… well, like clothes. He wondered, momentarily, if he had been mixed up with a house-elf and that Lily might not want him anymore; it wasn't an uncommon mistake in his lives after all. "I had Petunia help me pick it out. As soon as I mentioned it was for you, she started trying to get me to buy everything that she knew you wouldn't like, so when she said you wouldn't… well, I think I did alright enough." She prodded him to open the paper, which he did mechanically. Sell-O tape was peeled away from the crack in the wrapping with utmost care, so as not to rip the delicate paper. He pulled back the edges and saw green.

A scarf, long with light gray stripes, was pulled delicately from the brilliant wrappings, looking as if it had been made particularly for the Slytherin who it had been gifted to. He unfurled it quickly to look at properly, and saw two green gloves with silver trim fall out onto the ground. These, too, he picked up, staring at them in wonder.

"I... I'm sorry! I should have known you'd not like it! I... I'll take it straight back to the store and... and – !" She looked so heartbroken, and Severus stared at her as she made her tirade, finally stopping her as he understood.

"They're wonderful!" The scarf went immediately from being played with to wrapped double about his neck and the gloves had his fingers sheathed within them in seconds. He allowed her a slight smile, a rare gift from him, but it was given regardless. Now Lily stared. "They're very warm. Thank you, Lily."

It was the first birthday gift his mother had ever given him, just as the Lord of the Rings had been her first Christmas gift to him. While she would have no idea what it meant to him, he did. These were things that he would have forever, even if he _did_ become a grumpy old grouch like the real Severus Snape. They continued their walk to the park in silence, but both content. Severus fingered the fringe of his scarf the whole way. They finally arrived at their usual spot, under the tree where they had first had a real conversation, and sat crisscross.

"Hey, Sev," Lily smiled widely, glancing up at where the sun was breaking through the clouds, "tell me more about the magical world. Please? We'll be starting at Hogwarts next year, right? And I don't want to be behind. Oh, I'll probably be worst in the class!" She giggled a bit. "But you'll help me through all of that, won't you Sev?"

"Of course I will, Lily, never think otherwise," he tugged a bit on the scarf, noting that it crashed horribly with the cream blouse his mother had given him to wear. How anything could clash with cream, he would never know. With the sun shining, he knew it should have made the winter day cooler, but he felt oddly warm and removed his coat, keeping the scarf and gloves firmly in place. "Well... when you first get on Diagon Alley, it's like seeing a rainbow when all your life you've been blind. There's so much to see! Flying broomsticks, apothecaries selling all sorts of potions, the book shops, sweet shops, stores for pranking. Although, because of the secrecy acts or whatever, muggles can't buy anything that isn't to be given to a witch or wizard, so that other muggles who don't know about our world already can't find out. It's illegal to show magic to muggles who aren't in the know, and the Ministry can punish you if you do magic outside of school, you get letters."

Lily's eyes suddenly widened in panic. Where before she had been smiling and listening with rapt attention, now she looked horrified. "But I _have_ done magic outside school!" She shrieked, obviously appalled that she might be expelled or thrown in jail before she would even _start_ learning how to perform magic properly. It was a horrific concept indeed. Luckily, it was also false.

"We're all right," Severus assured her, realizing his slip. He probably should have said that _first_. "We haven't got wands yet. They let you off when you're a kid and you can't help it." He paused here, then nodded in a grave manner. She _had_ to understand not to do anything over the summers, or else she might end up like he almost had; unable to finish out Hogwarts. It was a bitter prospect, "But once you're eleven and they start training you, then you've got to go careful."

Lily seemed to have calmed down, smiling at him slightly before looking down and picking up a small stick from the ground. It wasn't as long as a wand, but Severus had no doubt that she was imagining that it was one as she waved it in the air in some of the wand movements that she had seen Eileen use the one time she had come over to his house. After a moment she sighed and let it drop back to the ground and looked Severus in the eyes. There was something forlorn about her expression, but the man-turned-boy couldn't place it. He'd seen too many such expressions to bother figuring out what they meant after a while. "It _is_ real, isn't it?" She whispered, pleading. "It's not a joke? Petunia says you're lying to me. Petunia says there isn't a Hogwarts. It _is_ real, isn't it?"

Anger swept through him, but Severus shoved it behind his occlumancy walls just like every other time Petunia would make him mad. That _girl_ dared to deny the reality of magic when it was so plainly in front of her face? Not that he'd expected better, considering how she had treated the son of the girl before him, but _really_, that was monstrous. Petunia was a horrible person.

"It's real for us," said Severus. She had to understand. She had seen his mother's yearbook even! "Not for her. But we'll get the letter, you and me." And they would. It wasn't too long 'till summer, not to the forty-seven year old, even if six months was eternity to a child. Five minutes was forever, but a year could pass by without him even noticing. The wait would be worth it for both of them, because even if the entire world turned their backs on the pair, Severus would keep going to make sure that his only friend lived. Some would call that loyalty. He, however, considered it his duty, something owed, and something more. Maybe it was because he saw Lily as the wizarding world's only hope. And she was.

"Really?" it was hardly even a whisper when she asked, but Severus saw that she truly believed him. She just needed another push.

"Definitely," he breathed, splaying his legs out in front of him as he felt the pins an needles start lancing up his right leg from having it in one position for two long. They can't have been sitting down for more than two minutes! But then, he supposed, he always seemed to get the pins and needle treatment faster than others.

"And will it really come by owl?" It seemed a silly question; Lily seemed to ask a lot of silly questions. But, wouldn't he have too, had he grown up like a normal child? Not that he had any idea how normal children grew up of course – his childhoods had been ones of gross neglect and violence and the only one he could compare it to was Dudley the Whale-Boy.

"Normally," he replied, recalling when Hagrid had finally given him his letter. He recalled Hermione mentioning that Professor Sprout had visited her house a few days after she read her first letter and had escorted her family about Diagon Alley. "But you're a muggle-born, so someone from the school will have to come explain to your parents." It tended to paint a target to the old Pureblood families, but he didn't mention it. Only muggle-born students were led about by teachers, so the Slytherins (the bad ones) present on the Alley on those days would know who to pick on. It was awful, but things happened. Lily would just have to persevere.

"Does it make a difference, being muggle-born?" Severus looked at her dead on. Had she been reading his mind? But he shook the thought away. It made a world of difference, but... but this was _Lily_. She (or a version of her) had stood up for the true Snape, because she didn't care what anyone thought about blood. She would stand up for or against anyone for what was right. She couldn't have the stigma of thinking others would look down on her before she even got to Hogwarts.

"No. It doesn't make any difference," Severus assured her. This was not, strictly speaking, a lie. It didn't make any difference to him.

"Good," Lily leaned back against the tree grinning at her friend. She played with the ends of her hair, which she had taken to wearing in a ponytail in the past few weeks (he suspected it was due to Petunia's influence), so the bottom only barely reached below her shoulders. Still, she seemed unsure, so The-Boy-Who-Was-Once-The-Boy-Who-Lived (and just so happened to have half a dozen _other_ hyphenated names) thought to reassure her.

"You've got loads of magic," he piped up. "I saw that. All the time I was watching you..." He paused and blushed. They didn't talk about that. Sure, Lily understood that Severus was very shy unless he was insulting someone – though he tried very much to tone that down – but it was still an awkward topic. How many little boys stalked little girls home from school every day? Very few.

"How are things at your house?" asked Lily, obviously trying to change the topic. It didn't help much, as Severus seized up on principle.

"Fine." Which was a lie. Things were progressing downhill... but they _would_ get better, wouldn't they? As soon as Eileen gave him the recipe for her new medicine she would be better, he wouldn't have to wear her clothes anymore, and Tobias would have less to snap about. Besides, saying they were bad to Lily... well, he wouldn't lie if she directly asked. Given the lives he had led, the current state of things could be considered downright heavenly by comparison. She wouldn't see it that way though.

"They're not arguing anymore?" It was a tone of disbelief that followed this, and already Severus knew the jig was up. He could lie to his mother, his father, his dad... but not Lily. Not his mum.

"Oh, yes," he started, looking away and sneering, "they're arguing." They always argued. They did little but argue... but with the adjustments to Eileen's medicine, things would be better. He noted idly that he had picked up a few leaves and was tearing them to bits. "But it won't be that long and I'll be gone." 234 more days... not _too_ long. Less than a year. He could deal with that quite easily. Yes, 234 more days and then they would be at Hogwarts.

"Doesn't your dad like magic?" They'd been over this before. The one time Lily had come over and seen Eileen do magic, she had squealed excitedly. Tobias had just been arriving home to here the little girl (who he later found out was Severus' only friend, and had since decided that the boy must be gay if he couldn't make friends with boys) gushing over how amazing magic was. Severus hadn't left the house for a week after, too busy nursing his mother back to health with potions he barely had funds to make after the spare ones he managed to make were sold. That was when he realized why the real Snape had been so good at Potions; he needed to be to help his halfway insane mother.

"He doesn't like anything, much."

"Severus?" He smiled sardonically, though he didn't show the nature of the smile to her. If she said his original name like that... he would have liked that.

"Yeah?" He responded lazily, still hiding his smile a bit.

"Tell me about the dementors again."

He remembered the first time he had explained. She had asked, back in August, why she couldn't meet his mother. He told her about his family situation then, about how Tobias didn't like magic and how it occasionally drove him to madness. He had to tell about her short stint in Azkaban for protecting him from the mad muggle when she couldn't raise her wand to help herself, when half the time magic hadn't even worked for her since she married his father. How she had never been more beautiful before, standing defiantly even as she was dragged out of the courtroom. How she had become vapid and forgetful since she did "hard time."

"What d'you want to know about them for?" A fair question on his own part. Dementors weren't _nice_. He didn't want to have to tell Lily about the ugly parts of the magical world. Shouldn't she be asking questions about unicorns, dragons, fairies, and all that? Shouldn't she ask if leprechauns are real, or if he'd ever met a vampire? Something like that? But she asked about _dementors_ of all things. How he hated dementors.

"If I use magic outside school –" Oh, of course that would be her reason.

"They wouldn't give you to the dementors for that!" Severus protested. Why would she think a little thing like underage magic would send her to Azkaban? He paused that train of thought for a moment, recalling the summer that Sirius had broken out of prison. Hadn't he decided to run from the law when he became scared that he would be arrested for _accidental_ magic? Maybe it wasn't too bad. "Dementors are for people who do really bad stuff. They guard the wizard prison, Azkaban. You're not going to end up in Azkaban, you're too –" He stopped and picked up another leaf, shredding it as he fought down the passionate words he couldn't think of. Wonderful? Good? Innocent? None of those fit what he wanted to say.

A rustling above caused Severus to jolt his head straight up at the bows of the tree. Petunia was grasping a low-hanging branch in a vice, obviously having lost her footing. What was she doing there?

"Tuney!"

"Who's spying now? What d'you want?" Severus snapped, already on his feet, leafy scraps falling from his trousers. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he recalled Petunia telling Vernon, when he was still Harry, of course, about Dementors. Somehow, this was supposed to happen, or perhaps she had stolen one of Lily's books one year? That made a lot more sense.

Petunia looked furious as she dropped properly onto the ground. Her eyes searched, for what he didn't know, until she stuck her finger straight forward within a foot of his chest and sneered at him in a way he recalled from his first childhood. "What is that you're wearing, anyway? Your mum's blouse?"

It was too much. All his life, Petunia had said bad things about his mum straight to his face. Called her a whore, slut, freak, show-off, preferred child, anything to make Harry mad so her great Walrus of a husband could abuse him some more. He'd seen the looks she gave Lily, heard the whispered mutterings of "freakish things" even in his new life as Snape... but she had crossed the line. This was where she had been when she died, spiteful and cruel. Severus wouldn't let her get away with insulting Eileen like that, or him.

Before he even realized what was happening, he felt his magic bubbling up inside him, and he tried to tamp it down. He didn't want to hurt her _physically_! He wanted to scare her, yes, insult her, maybe even make her cry, but he would do it in the way of a regular muggle child, not... not in a way that would prove her right!

But it was too late. With a loud crack, the limb that Petunia was standing under snapped off, landing heavily on her shoulder. She wailed in pain, clutching what would surely be a bruise later on, if it hadn't been dislocated. Severus stared in horror. If only he had inherited Lily's talent... he could have controlled it, maybe, but it was as out of his control. Why couldn't he control his magic?

"Tuney!" Lily rushed the two steps to her sister's side, trying to check her over in the ways a child would know, but Petunia was off and running, crying. Lily turned wide eyes to Severus. "Did you make that happen?"

"No." It was his magic. It was his magic! He tried to stop it.

"You did!" She was retreating from him. He hadn't meant for it to happen! But his voice wasn't working. He couldn't say it. "You _did_! You hurt her!"

"No – no I didn't!"

She glared at him in only the way Lily could and took of running in the direction of her house. Severus slumped to the ground and glared at the fallen limb. Stupid tree... stupid Petunia... stupid _magic!_

Roughly three weeks later, Severus watched as Lily stepped onto her porch. A box was waiting there for her, with her name written in a tiny, neat scrawl, so she picked it up. The ribbon, a bright green, was removed from the plain brown box, and three small tubes were removed as she looked at them oddly. One was a strange greenish color, Murtlap essence: the second was straight-out white, a Perk-me-up: the third was forget-me-not blue, a calming draught. She pulled a sheet of plain muggle paper from inside the box before setting that aside with the small bottles on a porch chair and pulling out a small jar. A bruise balm.

Slowly, she packed each item back in the box and smiled. The ribbon was used to tie her hair back in a ponytail before Lily stepped back inside her house. Severus smiled.

"Happy Birthday, Lily," he whispered, wrapped his scarf tighter around his neck, and disappeared going back down the street to return to Spinner's End.

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**A/n: Parts of this chapter (mostly dialogue with regular text based on the scenes that dialogue occurs in) are pulled from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, chapter thirty-three: The Prince's Tale pages 663-668. Yes, I realize that the last scene ought to have been in spring or summer, and no, I don't care. I wanted it to happen on Snape's birthday, gosh darn it! (Did I actually just fake swear? Ugh.)**

**Hm... this chapter is the longest I've written on this site... sweet :)**


	3. The Owl That Changed It All

Walking on a Broken Past

Walking on a Broken Past

**Words: 6,620**

**Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, Severus Snape, or any of JKR's creations in general. I do not own the theory of time travel, the multiverse, or the "oh noes, the second war lasts forever!" plot device for that matter. What I do own (I think...) is the precise twist this story has, as I have never seen anything of the sort before. I do not own nuclear winter, weapons, or the cold war. **

**Warnings: Character death. Gory descriptions. Child abuse. Spouse abuse. Suicide. Murder. Not completely canon, even discounting the AU it starts in. Mostly canon through books six and seven. Weasley bashing. Dumbledore bashing. Potter bashing. Order bashing. Hogwarts professors bashing. Glorifying of evil and Voldemort. Nerdy moments. Fake spells created on a Latin translator are also included. Occasional religious comments (but I'm an atheist, so they're kinda widespread and not from the religious perspective). Lots of angst. Coarse language. Drug abuse. Alcohol abuse. Slash pairings. Oedipal undertones. Sexual innuendo. Mentions of sex (but the actual act thereof will not be described in this story).**

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_Chapter 3: The Owl That Changed It All_

_"Develop your eccentricities while you are young. That way, when you get old, people won't think you're going gaga." David Ogilvy_

Lily forgave him, eventually. It was midway into February when they finally started talking again, and another month before everything seemed back to normal for the pair. Of course, Petunia hadn't been very badly injured; all that came of the incident was a bruise on her shoulder and some pain if she gesticulated too wildly (which wasn't something she did, so no problem there). She left on schedule and wasn't heard from again by either of the two Primary students until her return in mid-June, when she promptly ignored Severus and tried to steer her sister away from magic and the creepy little boy who had hurt her.

It was July, when the Hogwarts letters usually came out. Or, rather, when they usually came out in those times. The "Defense Professor Curse" was still going strong, but not scaring away as many applicants as it would in the nineties with Voldemort more widely known. The Dark Lord was only just starting to gain notice, and was mostly considered a menace, but none yet feared to speak his name. He was just "that Voldemort nutter" who was going around killing muggle-borns. No mass attacks on muggle towns, no threats to the Ministry. Not yet.

This was when there would finally be tangible truth to Lily that magic was real and that she, too, was a being of great magical power. So the letter came. Petunia was out to the cinema with some friends from Primary school while Severus visited Lily over a lunch of ham and turkey sandwiches at the young red-head's insistence. An owl swooped through the open kitchen window mere minutes after they and Mr. and Mrs. Evans say down to their sandwiches, landing easily when Severus held his arm up for a perch.

The bird, a handsome tawny, hooted gratefully through the envelope in its mouth as it took up the offer. His arm was lowered, bearing its feathery burden, and the owl dropped the letter face-up on Severus' lunch before stealing a piece of the ham from within and a sip of his water. On the front of the letter were the words "Ms. L. Evans" and the street address of the Evanses home. Lily had snatched it up hungrily, eyeing it like a starved man would a turkey dinner with all the trimmings as she turned it over to rub her thumb over the purple wax seal that bore the miniaturized Hogwarts Crest. This was not what caught Severus' attention.

His letter had not come with Lily's, meaning it would be at his house when it arrived, and _he wasn't there to do damage control_. Eileen and Tobias were both home that day, he knew. Eileen would be cleaning up in the house and Tobias watching a football game on the telly. From what he had heard from other Hogwarts students before the Purge, owls went to the head of a family if the student was not at home when the owl arrived; the owl would go to Tobias, who would then know without a doubt that his "son" was not a "normal" person like him, could never be like him at all. Tobias would know he was the father of a wizard, a monstrosity, a heretic just like Eileen. Somewhere in the back of his mind, Severus heard the words that had been spoken when his body had just been a baby reverberating.

_"It's a name to remind him that his mother is unnatural, and to show what'll happen if he doesn't grow up to be a _normal_ man."_

"I've got to go," Severus said, gently settling the owl on the table so as not to jar it. He had to get home, to stop whatever it was that Tobias was going to in retaliation. His name meant "stern" or "harsh" and whatever the man who named him did would follow that meaning. Likely the repercussions would carry over to Eileen first, because he would believe that, even if the baby they had found had been normal at the start (which he hadn't been) that her _heretical magic ritual_ had somehow made it so. "Tobias doesn't much like owls." He glanced at Lily, who looked up from her letter eyes wide. She nodded and her turned, leaving his unwitting grandparents looking between the two in confusion.

He bolted the twelve blocks between their houses, not stopping to think as he leaped over a pothole, nor to rub at his aching legs as the lactic acid started burning in his muscles. A few pedestrians were dodged, but most got out of his way instead. He ran diagonally through the park where he and Lily met and kept on going. It was only when he reached Spinner's End that he stopped, horrified.

There was no screaming or shouting coming from the house, not even the false shouts that Eileen had barely managed to program into the wards for when Tobias yelled at her for being a witch. It was completely still. This was not a good sign, he knew. Maybe Tobias had killed her, and was now going to come at him with a shot gun? But the real Snape had survived to go to Hogwarts, so Tobias surely wouldn't _kill_ him. No, not that. Maybe Eileen had gone to the grocer's and Tobias was waiting to take his wrath out on the first one to return home. _Better me than her,_ Severus though to himself as he slowly turned the knob on the door.

Before he could shove the door open on his own power, it was yanked open roughly and Severus looked up to see his mother, whose face softened upon seeing him. Perhaps, then, Tobias was out.

"Come with me, Severus," Eileen said with a small smile. She pushed him lightly back from the door and stepped out. Since Severus had started brewing her new prescription, she had been a lot more stable, never forgetting laundry and never leaving her "son" to wear old blouses when she could find nothing else. The improvement was immense, he noted, even as she pulled his Hogwarts letter from her back pocket. "Here, you can read this on the way. You remember when I used to show you spells? Now you'll learn them too." The letter was pressed into his hands as she pressed a kiss to his forehead and led him down the road.

That pair of mother and son remained silent in their walk as Severus looked over his letter and Eileen seemed to cling to him in a way. He didn't know why she did, but Severus didn't pull away as they strode down the road, coming to a stop at a bus stop. He also didn't know where they were going, though he hoped it was Diagon Alley. But, then, Eileen hadn't let him inside to get his stash of money he made from selling extra potions. It wasn't much, but perhaps enough to buy most of his things secondhand. Where, then, were they going to go?

He heard the squeak of old brakes a couple of blocks away. "Remember Severus, that magic is natural. We're better than them, you and I. We know what there is in this world, that it's bigger than us, but in the magical world being the biggest fish doesn't mean you're the best one. You understand, don't you? That we're better than this. We are _Princes_, not the lowly Snape. We are better than they, we are stronger than him."

Severus nodded hesitantly. "Of course, Mother," he replied, looking at her oddly. While it was true they were the only people at the stop, Eileen usually had more presence of mind than to talk of such things in the open. Her stance on muggles and magic had changed, he knew. She had always thought muggles beneath her, as long as he had known the woman (she must not have, at one point, to run off and marry Tobias), and for the past several years she hated the Ministry for prosecuting her for defending herself and her son the only way she could, but this... this seemed different. "Where are we going?"

The brakes squealed again, and Eileen didn't answer. There was this... _smile_ on her face, something that was long since absent on the woman's face. Severus absently noted that she had let go of his shoulder, that she was stepping forward. The bus hadn't stopped yet, though, and Severus slowly realized something. They weren't _at_ the stop, but that it was several buildings over. He watched with some horrible, morbid fascination as Eileen Prince's leg drew her forward, as the screeching grew more insistent, the scream of tires and the smell of burned rubber all assaulting his senses as if to strangle him. There was a dull thud, and then it stopped.

Someone screamed, the doors on the bus opened two houses early as the bus driver jumped from the buses' stairs, running around to the back, the passengers piling off quickly. It wasn't messy though, not in the least bit. Her lower legs were crushed, and her back seemed twisted at an unnatural angle, but Severus had seen far worse as Harry. The problem was that, even as someone shoved him away from the gory scene, he couldn't understand why. Had the real Severus had to go through this, too? He wasn't so jaded as him. No, that Snape had grown up abused, but he hadn't been in his late forties when this happened, hadn't seen countless people die for him. Severus pursed his lips and stepped back. He had to get back to the house.

So he did. He left his mother's corpse behind half an hour later as the ambulance came down the road, as the crowds dispersed and people looked for the small boy who had seen the death. He left that behind and walked back to Spinner's End. The door was open, he noted, but he supposed that Tobias had come home and left in a hurry or something. He pushed it the rest of the way and entered the sitting room, kicking the heels of his shoes on the door stop as he went. Tobias would have to be told of his wife's untimely death. Perhaps then he, too, would leave, and Severus could go elsewhere. Or, perhaps, he would try to stop Severus from going to Hogwarts. He didn't know.

With these thoughts in his head, Severus didn't notice that anyone was in the room until there was a light cough to his left. He spun about quickly, taking stock of the newcomer, or, rather, newcomers. Three men stood in the sitting room, obviously not understand that particular room's intended purpose. The first, he recalled, as being the Ministry representative who had come when Eileen hexed Tobias several years previous. Flanking him were two men in crimson auror's robes; a team meant for apprehension of suspects of higher crimes. Why would they be there? He asked them, forgetting for a moment that he was supposed to be eleven. Maybe, from what he had seen, he had an excuse not to be anymore.

"Who are you, child, and how did you get through the muggle repelling wards on this house?" The middle-man asked sternly.

"Well, for starters, I'm _not_ a muggle – stupid question to ask if I was one, since they wouldn't know what you're talking about – and second I live here. Now what are you doing here?" The men seemed surprised, but Severus thought he caught a glimmer of recognition in the representative's eyes as he nodded thoughtfully.

"I should have known. This is the residence of Tobias Snape, Eileen Prince-Snape, and Severus Snape?" Severus nodded in response. Shouldn't they already know that if they were standing in the sitting room? "And you are Severus Tobias Snape, son of Tobias Alan Snape and Eileen Esmeralda Prince-Snape?" He nodded again. Where were they going with this? "Could you enlighten us, then, as to where we might find your mother?" That hadn't quite been what he expected.

"On her way to the morgue, I would think," he answered after a moment, "or in transit to the Hospital, if they think they can help her. I doubt it." At the flabbergasted looks on the faces of the three men he snorted. "So you didn't come about that then, else you would've known, I suppose, wouldn't you? She jumped in front of a bus not forty minutes past. I came home to inform Tobias. If you aren't here about her suicide, then why are you? I see no reason for you to be present at all. Tobias needs to be informed of what can happens so that he, as the husband of my mother, can decide on the proceedings. That is how it's done." He stared them down with his best Snape-glare, daring them to contradict him.

The men huddled, muttering though Severus caught a few words here and there, the phrases "child services" and "mind healer" being volleyed about a few times. He merely glared at them. It was obvious they meant to have some hack of a legilimens pick at his brains to try and "help" him get over the trauma. Sure, it was unpleasant, and he did feel a little numb, but he'd seen worse. He'd seen things that would make all of their hair curl and turn white, and those weren't even the worse. No, what right did they have to pass judgment upon him?

"If you will kindly step out now, since you obviously aren't going to talk to the person you are seeking. I will wait for my _father_ to return home," he added atone of disgust to the word, "and hopefully never see any of your gentlemen ever again." When the group simply gave him a sheepish look he scowled. He truly understood the true Snape's feelings on the matter of dunderheads now. "What is it?" He snarled through clamped teeth. The auror on the left, whom he vaguely recognized, though why he couldn't say, stepped forward, coughing lightly into his hand.

"Sever..." he paused at the glare being leveled at him by the boy and reassessed his system of address. "Mr. Snape, then. Would you please enlighten us as to what, to your knowledge, occurred today since noon in this house?" He seemed terribly proud of himself.

"I wouldn't know," Severus snapped in retort. "I was having lunch at a friend's house when her Hogwarts letter arrived and I thought to come and read my own. When I arrived home, Mother led me out of the house and handed me my letter as we walked to her site-of-death. I assume my father went to the liquor store." Somehow that didn't seem right even in his own ears. He recalled, before he walked in the house, that Tobias' car had been in the driveway, and the liquor store was too far off for him to walk. The religious anti-magic man wasn't about to let a bunch of strange wizards (or ones he knew... of course, all wizards were strange to him, but still) into his home without giving (or receiving) a black eye or two beforehand. The idea rubbed the young/middle-aged-ish child/man the wrong way, though he couldn't place why.

The aurors seemed to exchange glances, the one who had spoken prodding his partner into standing up to the fearsome child. He seemed to grumble, looking away carefully from Severus as he said, with a _very_ sorry look on his face, something that Severus had not been expecting at all. "Mr. Snape... at exactly 1200 hours we received a blip on our records of magic being used on a muggle at this address. Upon arrival some twenty minutes later, the Representative for the Office of Magical Law Enforcement, Muggle-Magic Involvement Division found one Tobias Snape..." he paused, sizing up the child and swallowing, "dead. He was k-killed via a killing curse from his wife... your mother."

The auror moved forward, seeming to attempt to _hug_ Severus of all things, but he dodged the attempt with the ease with which he had dodged the attacks of bullies in his Primary days. He was too busy thinking to bother with such Hufflepuff, emotional displays and being _distraught_ and _comforted_ of all things by a stranger. What did this mean for him? Would he be going to an orphanage? Surely not, as he recalled vaguely coming to this house once when the real Snape was helping him hide during his horcrux hunt after the Battle for Hogwarts. He hadn't believed in such sentimentality as to buy the rundown house upon adulthood. But perhaps he, as Severus, had driven this to happen. It could explain a lot.

"Do you have anyone you can stay with, kid? Any friends, family who could take you in at least until September when permanent arrangements can be made?" The middle-man asked. He had a very hopeful look on his face.

Severus glanced up, rapidly running through options. He knew they wouldn't send a child who already knew a bit about the magical world to a muggle orphanage, as they usually did stay with friends or family instead. But what were his options? Eileen's parents had never even met him and would likely not take kindly to the extra burden. Tobias' family... well, he didn't even know if the man _had_ family, let alone how to contact them. That left friends, and he had only Lily and his Grandparents-who-didn't-know-they-were-related. He couldn't force himself on the family who had done so much for him without even realizing it already; he shook his head.

"Oh... this is getting more complicated," the second auror groaned. It was hardly a professional attitude, but maybe they thought that acting casual would bring down Severus' guard. After all, they believed him to be but a child who had, in the space of an hour, lost both of his parents. Maybe they thought being cold and clinical like they were supposed to be would make him uncomfortable and start bawling on them. He doubted they were any good with children to begin with. "Er, well, how about you come with us to the Ministry and we can get you set up with child services." The auror rubbed the back of his neck nervously, and Severus took pity on the man. His job, should he survive over the next ten years, wouldn't be easy after all. He had no clue what Voldemort would rain upon the Wizarding World.

"If possible, I'd like to contact Headmaster Dumbledore," he stated quietly. "As a potential new student and an unsorted one at that, he will need to be made aware of any changes in guardianship, housing, and such, won't he?" He added the question at the end to comfort the aurors a bit. "And I need to make sure I can still attend." That seeming moment of insecurity did seem to bring down the unnerved-factor of the Ministry workers at least, though they still seemed antsy around him. Severus could hardly care, as he was still in a sort of shock, though luckily not the medical sort. The numbness, for the moment, was just fine by him. After all, he had just about completed his suicide-witness list. The only ones he could think of off the top of his head that he hadn't seen were slashing one's own throat and poking an electrical socket with a fork. In retrospect, he wasn't completely certain that the latter would do more than give someone a nasty shock, no matter what cartoons said.

"Sure thing, kid," the middle reassured him. As if Severus needed reassurance! Orphans and lower income families were given minor scholarships to Hogwarts, as he remembered Dumbledore telling Tom Riddle in the pensive memories from sixth year. And, aside from that, he knew that the Princes had paid for his Hogwarts tuition when he was a baby and they found out about Eileen having a child. He would just have to worry about summer housing and funds for his school supplies. "We can send him an owl from the Ministry. Have you ever apparated before?"

Half an hour later, Severus found himself in a sitting room in the Child Services Division of some Department he could bother to remember the name of. He didn't really care. What he _did_ care about was what would happen to him. A muggleborn auror had gone to the Hospital near Spinner's End and found that Eileen had been dead when the ambulance arrived, killed by her spine trauma and having her lungs pierced by broken ribs. They hadn't meant to have him overhear what was said on the matter, but he did, learning not only the details of her injuries, but that the auror in question believed she had gotten her "just desserts." He had scowled at them, but said nothing.

It was just after the auror told the counselor who was trying to work with Severus – trying being the operative word – about the definite state of death regarding his mother that the only person Severus _did_ care to talk to popped it. He was tall, several inches more so than Tobias had been (even without the pointed, purple wizard's hat), and wearing a full length robe, purple with shooting stars that actually shot over the fabric, tied tightly at the waist with a silver sash. Tucked beneath that sash was a beard of stunning white that went front just below waist-height to the elderly man's chin. To muggles he would seem impossibly old at 127 years, but Severus, and anyone who had heard the man's name even in passing, knew that the old codger had a hidden inner strength, and even if Severus couldn't tell him of the future, he was still important.

So as the Headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry sat before Severus, sending a twinkling smile at Ms. Studebaker, the Child Services counselor – she insisted on being called Abby, but he kept calling her Mrs. Gilbert, just to screw with her mind – there was little the man/boy could do but show respect for the eccentric old man. He stood up from his seat, gave a deep nod, and held out his hand to shake, which the old man did. While his eyes did twinkle (how they did, The-Ex-Boy-Who-Lived was never to know), his face held an expression that could be described only as soft, perhaps even understanding. It almost made sense, he supposed, that the man would imagine he understood what a _normal_ eleven year old wizard would feel in such circumstances, but Severus was not, in any way, shape, or form, a normal eleven year old wizard, and so he imagined that Dumbledore was completely oblivious as to how he actually felt at that exact moment in time. It wasn't much of a stretch.

"It's an honor to meet you, Headmaster," Severus stated graciously as he returned to his seat. "Is it safe to assume that whoever contacted you has already briefed you on my situation?" It sounded cold even to _him_, but it was accurate. After all, if a child were not breaking down in such circumstances (not that a real child would _ever_ not be breaking down at that point), did it not make sense for them to be clinical? It made sense to Severus at least.

Dumbledore just smiled at him in that way only Dumbledore could, like he was about to offer a sherbet lemon at any point in time and the world would never know, because it was his secret plan to make everyone love the sour sweets. Or that's how Severus interpreted it. "Indeed they have, young Severus," the smile was almost condescending, but Severus didn't react, just watched the old man. "I would like to extend my condolences, and assure you that, whatever happens regarding your housing situation, you are still welcome at Hogwarts. Auror Gibbons informed me that you seemed worried on that point."

The speech patterns were immediately picked up. Doubtless the Headmaster thought that, by playing at Severus game of formal speech he might startle him into having a _healthy reaction_ instead of bottling everything behind his occlumancy shields. But that wasn't going to work. He was too good at the game himself to fall for that.

"More so that I might end up with guardians who sympathize with Voldemort, or perhaps even the opposite extreme and that I might be disallowed from attending by whoever should become my legal guardian," this, too, was a lie, but Severus was a master of the art of telling falsehoods. He had been doing this for decades; even the most talented legilimens couldn't find out without using the Mind-Rape aspect of legilimancy that was often used to test the walls of Advanced Occlumancy students. "However, I do have some small dilemma. I... would like to remain in the town I currently live in. I have a friend there, and I would not like to leave her alone every summer. Asking her family to remain with them over the holiday would not be practical," he knew how Dumbledore worked, and wanted to head him off, "as my friend's sister dislikes magic, and most especially myself. Do you know of any way to work around this?"

He hoped there might be a magical family in the area that he just didn't know about. There was no way he would actually leave Lily _alone_ over the summers, couldn't leave his mum to the wrath of petty Petunia, and he knew it wasn't entirely selfless either. He couldn't survive without seeing her frequently either. Like any human – for they are social creatures – he needed human interaction with someone his own age. Despite her being a girl, having just her would be good enough, because as his mum there shouldn't be any sexual tension either. It would work out. It _had_ to. Perhaps making friends with Lily had changed things too much, but he had to try to do _something_.

The Headmaster nodded slowly and left the room, taking the counselor with him, obviously for a private chat. Severus simply sat patiently, running through potions and their ingredients in his head. He cycled through the first year syllabus, remembering with ease the mistakes he had found in his mother's old text books that she had given to him and fixing them. Though she had never known it, he had snuck her Advanced text as well, filling the margins with cramped corrections and jotting down some of the spells he remembered being in there from his sixth year. While he didn't care to emulate the future, Severus felt that such homage to who would have been him was deserved. Also, it was always a good idea to have written documentation of spells, even those he meant never to share.

Just as he was reviewing the correct stirring pattern for a basic calming draught, the Headmaster and Mrs. Studebaker returned, seeming to have had a productive talk. They returned to the table, murmuring things that Severus didn't even bother listening in on, and Dumbledore signed a few documents before he finally turned to the young boy sitting ever-so-calmly on the cream couch with a stuffed penguin sitting beside him. Not that he had anything against penguins, but that particular attempt to get him to open up had been _pathetic_. Though, it _was_ a rather cute penguin.

Not that Severus noticed or anything. And he certainly didn't pet the plush toy while the adults were out of the room. Surely not.

"Come with me, Severus, we have come up with a trial-based arrangement for the next week, and we shall see how it goes from there, hm?" Severus only recalled being so infuriated with the old man once before in his previous life, when he broke half the things in Dumbledore's office afterwards because he was so frustrated. But Dumbledore hadn't done that yet, so he couldn't say why the all knowing smile and devious twinkle made him wish for a repeat performance. He assumed it was something to do with his stress levels and exasperation from the less-than-great day he'd been having. He was probably right.

Dumbledore led him uncontested through the halls of the third floor of the Ministry to the lifts. There, they boarded with two other wizards who tried to engage the famous Headmaster in conversation, but they couldn't be overheard for the Interdepartmental owls that had taken roost on everyone's shoulders (eight in all), and so the ride continued properly. Severus had some scraps from his sandwich two hours before in his pocket that he had grabbed for the owl that would have delivered his letter, and so he became best friends with the owls that used him for a perch. In their opinion anyway.

From there, they arrived in the Atrium, where Dumbledore was quick to explain the feeling of apparition to give him a fair idea of what to expect, and then he had the _brilliant_ idea to ask if he had ever side-along apparated before. Naturally, Severus answered yes, asking what the man took him for, a muggle? The old man had then chuckled, grabbed his elbow, and turned on his heel to whisk the man-child away to Merlin only _knew_ where. With the distinct feeling that someone had socked him in the gut to alleviate him of all his air supply before being stuffed in a small, rubber tube for an extended period of time, sans oxygen, Severus was glad when his feet hit solid ground again. Doing this twice in one day was not pleasant for his young body.

There had been several things to be expected upon his arrival. Meeting a family with a muggle-born child, or a family with half-blood parents had been one of those possibilities. Another had been finding himself in a magical orphanage of some sort. Of course, having spent most of his life as Harry Potter, he knew not to expect what is expected, and therefore did not expect his expectations to be the proper things to expect. This was, without a doubt, a smart move, as nothing expected could ever happen to anyone who had ever had the name Potter. It would be too _ordinary_.

Severus was standing in the small kitchen (hardly bigger than a standard kitchenette) of the dumpy not-even-half-paid-for house on Spinner's End, standing next to a very purple person. "Severus," Dumbledore always did like to say people's names a lot when he spoke with them, "it was decided between myself and the sub-department head of the Child Services department that for the next week you will be living in your home with a keeper who will check on you every other hour." Severus knew that the man thought he would break down before the day was out, but he refused. He wasn't really eleven and even if he _did_ want to do something emotional – which he didn't – he had no right. He was forty-seven years old after all. "Due to your apparent stability it was decided that you should be all right alone, and you told Mrs. Studebaker that you are proficient in household chores, did you not? If you are found to be alright on your own after a week, your minder will appear at less frequent intervals, or as you are comfortable... is this arrangement alright with you?"

In all honesty, Severus had never imagined that the wizarding world had been quite so backwater, even in the seventies. Allowing a child to live on their own? Were they _mad_? Were they asking for him to blow up the house in a potions accident or something? But there was no way in Hell that he would refuse this offer, he knew. It offered him freedom, independence, and, most importantly, Lily. It wasn't an offer that should ever be made to a child at any stage before their majority, but Severus took solace in the knowledge that he was not, in fact, a child. He wouldn't break or turn away this chance like a normal child would in the week to come. Instead, he looked up at Professor Dumbledore, straight past the thrice-broken nose, and nodded in simple acquiescence. If he protested the lack of logic behind the decision, he knew it would be insisted that he go to some orphanage or something anyway. It wasn't worth it.

"Excellent, m'boy!" the old man chirped happily. He untied a small bag of clanking coins from his side and handed them over. "As I said – or did I? Hm, can't remember, really – Hogwarts has a fund for students who do not have the means to attend. You'll have to buy of most of your things second hand, but here they are. Mrs. Studebaker has also assured me that the Ministry will provide you with the funds necessary to keep up your living arrangements, including utilities and money for the grocer's and such so long as the present arrangements are found acceptable by all parties involved. And when you want to go to Diagon Alley, just send an owl along to Hogwarts. I will send a teacher along to accompany you. Is that satisfactory?"

Sweet Circe, the man was insane! The entire system was maddening. Severus was absolutely _infuriated_ that this sort of thing was even legal. Leaving an eleven year old child relatively unattended for the whole summer? Telling him he would get money and be expected to spend wisely? He was supposedly just a child; how could anyone expect him to be responsible enough to handle this sort of thing? The fact that he wasn't really a kid at all, and was in fact very responsible with money (even when he'd been bloody rich his spending was parsimonious) did not make the matter any better, considering the ones responsible were not aware of the fact. He wanted to bash his own head in for it!

But he didn't. Instead, Severus thought it was best to test the waters. How far had wizarding society come since the thirties, when Dumbledore had allowed a student with no practical knowledge of the magical world go shopping on his own? Would it already be required that muggle-born and/or raised students be accompanied by a Professor? There was a double-edged hope to this; he hoped that it was, because it would mean that _someone_ had some common sense, but on the other hand he hoped not because an escort would question him, treat him with kid's gloves, and probably spy on him for the Headmaster.

"Sir, if possible, I would like to do my shopping alone," he requested, neither coldly nor warmly. Severus' neutral tone was probably his best tool for this encounter, since he was convincing Dumbledore – not that he was going to be like Riddle – that he needed space. If the old man fell for it... well, then the wizarding world was more backward than he ever expected. And that was saying something.

The Headmaster seemed to contemplate the idea for a moment as Severus waited with bated breath, wondering what the aged wizard would say. After a moment, he nodded. "Yes, I believe your mother has taken you there before? Good, good," he hadn't waited for any form of response, "then I expect to see you on the first of September. Your caretaker should arrive in a few minutes and pop in several times a day for the next few weeks to make sure you are fine." He continued to restate the odd policy being allowed the boy before waving jovially at the boy – that was hardly the way to be around a recently orphaned child! – and apparating away.

Severus stared at the space that his ex-and-future mentor had vacated and wished very much to smack his head against a wall. With the damned man being so _jovial_ and _trusting_, naive even, the wizarding world as Severus knew it was, simply put, doomed.

Very doomed.

X.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.x.X

**A/n: Shorter (much) chapter this time, sorry if you don't like it but chapters are as long as they need to be. Live with it.**

**I would like to note that, strictly speaking, I'm still not breaking canon, because, as you will see in the next chapter, there will be something to deal with what's happened and still make it integrate smoothly enough. So there. And don't go pulling book crap on me now, I've pretty much memorized The Prince's Tale, so you can sod off. There is one part of that chapter that I will not consider canon – Snape talking to Lily about the Willow Incident. As far as I know, it is canon that it happened in sixth year, and this memory was obviously before the two split.**

**Please note that the above does not indicate whether my story is actually following canon or not past any certain point, just that I dislike how Rowling presented that moment. Sorry that I have opinions, I'll try to drown them later.**

**Bye.**


	4. Author's Note yeah, one of these

Author's Note

Unlike the note I left on NSNS about five minutes ago, this one won't be quite as demeaning to my writing capabilities of 8 months ago. I actually _liked_ this story, y'know? I mean, I liked the idea of Harry being Severus and going through the life of his childhood tormentor and what could lead him to be the same way to his younger self in the future... I mean, it was going to be a cool story. Maybe not the best written ever, maybe a bit dramatic, but I honestly liked it.

Unfortunately, I just couldn't write it. Three chapters was all I could manage and then... well, then we went 8 months without me writing a single sentence. Seems kinda unfair... but it's the honest to Merlin truth.

I might try to just rewrite the entire thing into a one-shot - albeit a _long_ one-shot - but I dunno. If I do, it'll go on the account that I've been using... er, pretty much since July '08. Sorry guys.

**To those interested in what I've been writing the past 8 months: check out _Stalker of Stories_ (I've mostly written slash, but there's some het, and it's all tasteful... except for one piece I wrote for a friend that I suggest NOT reading)**


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